[x0x0]

Advertisers.

Preroll ads are valuable because people are mostly paying attention. eg you went to youtube to watch X, and they show you 15 seconds of swiffer beforehand.

The problem is there aren't enough preroll ad slots available to satisfy demand.

Therefore, companies invent them. One thing I know people are doing is this: film a video every day. Talk about who cares. It could be upcoming movies; the tv show with dragons; whatever. Buy an ad slot. Play your video. Put a preroll or interstitial ad in your video. Tada! You just turned dirt cheap ad inventory into expensive video ad inventory. Of course, if the viewer leaves the page too fast, you lose the money you spent. So this is an arbitrage play.

The problem with manufacturing video ad inventory is that almost all the manufactured stuff is either (1) off onto the side, or (2) not gating something that a viewer wants to see. And hence, they don't receive attention.

Make sense?

Legit video advertisers and publishers are all unhappy about this, because this shitty faked inventory drops the value of the real thing, ie preroll ads in main content that the user wishes to see.

Oh, and publishers get very unhappy because (1) many of them are ok with picture ads but not at all okay with autoplay video ads; (2) if they're going to put autoplay videos on their page and take the hit for (rationally) pissed off users, the pub wants to pocket that $5-$25cpm rather than get paid for still picture ads and let some arbitrager steal the difference.

[eveningcoffee]

>Preroll ads are valuable because people are mostly paying attention. eg you went to youtube to watch X, and they show you 15 seconds of swiffer beforehand.

Personal anecdote time.

Preroll ads are the main force for me behind installing the adblocker. I just can not stand something that manipulates my flow. I call it televication of the Internet. It is unbearable.

If for some reason I am not able to block them then I just do not watch them and I am not listening to them (I look elsewhere, say a lalala mantra in your mind).

I also taught my family to do so.

So advertisers actually loose in the long term.

[stordoff]

> Preroll ads are the main force for me behind installing the adblocker

They are certainly one of the most annoying classes of ads, which is why I was exceptionally annoyed when Amazon put one before a Prime video I was watching a few days ago.

Granted it was for an Amazon product, but any sort of ad in a paid service is _extremely_ annoying.

[oliv__]

I've always hated how you pay ~$8-15 for a movie ticket, and then have to sit through half an hour of ads. What the hell??

[kuschku]

The issue of that is that for the first month, between 40 and 90% of the ticket price goes directly to the studio (not to the cinema). Plus you pay (cheapest value for Frozen, English, 2D, 6 months after release) usually at least 8'000€ per week to rent the movie.

So the cinema has to somehow make money – and that is with ads and food.

[Symen]

> If for some reason I am not able to block them then I just do not watch them and I am not listening to them (I look elsewhere, say a lalala mantra in your mind).

I've started using a similar strategy on YouTube in order to selectively "protest" against bad ads. Whenever I stumble upon a long unskippable ad or a short very aggressive ad (loud and/or offensive), I mute the video and start reading comments for a while, or I alt+tab to a different video, etc. Sometimes I leave the page if the video (or uploader) is not worth the hassle.

In my mind this can lead to 3 different scenarios:

* Google notices this behavior and decides to enforce heavier regulation on ads (they already killed >30s unskippable ads this year).

* Google notices this behavior and tries to fight it (e.g. by pausing the ad if the volume is not low enough, the Spotify way). In the browser this leads to an arms race that Google can't win. In the worst case I would go back to avoiding all advertising using adblock and/or alternative financing if available (YouTube RED, patreon, etc.)

* Google doesn't react, bad ads lose so much value that most uploaders stop using them. They don't want to alienate their viewers for so little benefit.

We need many people to apply this strategy for this to work. However in the short term content creators still get paid, and I get the personal satisfaction of screwing over bad advertisers.

[pbhjpbhj]

Google already pause ad play if you change app/tab focus; my perception is (on Android?) this is a recent change. So you have to have the video ad playing to get to the point when you can skip it. So, like you I turn away - it's really annoying, but that just makes it more attention grabbing.

[Symen]

You are right, this does not work as well on mobile (at least on android). There is also no mute button on the YouTube app.

The funny thing is that they also pause videos when changing app/tab (not only ads), because background playback is a YouTube RED "feature". I would understand if YouTube RED was available in more than 5 countries. They have been artificially depriving their users of a basic feature for years and for nothing.

In the meantime I simply avoid watching long YouTube videos on my phone, and use NewPipe to listen to podcasts hosted on youtube (which means no ad revenue...).

[ashark]

> If for some reason I am not able to block them then I just do not watch them and I am not listening to them (I look elsewhere, say a lalala mantra in your mind).

Ah yes, the realization that all the spy-economy-supported content provides vanishingly little value to your life, and that if they managed to actually lock things down so you couldn't block ads it'd harm you not at all to simply stop looking at their stuff. A liberating state of mind.

[undersuit]

What am I actually supposed to do in those 15 seconds?

[ashark]

Huh? I mean stop watching the low-value media supported by ads, if you can't skip the ads. We're awash in excellent media. The best humanity's created for the last few millennia. The problem of this age (at least in the developed world) is deciding what not to look at. In that environment, most of the stuff behind 15-second ad videos isn't worth my time if I can't block the ad.

If ad-blocker-blocking gets too good, I could ditch it at an infinitesimal cost to my quality of life. My alternatives are many and could last a few lifetimes even if no new content of any kind were produced at all. News, even? A news habit is of about as much practical value as a soap opera habit. I could drop this stuff like that. No problem. Go ahead and somehow permanently break my adblocker or wall off a large part of the web behind custom protocols and DRM. Bye bye.

[EDIT] the "realization" I meant in my earlier post was that, on examination, one may find that desire to watch/hear/read most ad-supported media is so low that not only is it not a need, it's barely even a want.

[robryan]

Twitch gets me which is unfortunate because they are generally providing a good service. They hit you with one of these ads pretty much every time you change channels, no matter how frequently.

[briandear]

In flight entertainment on United does the same thing. I practically have the barracuda networks pre-roll memorized by now. But if it helps United provide more content without raising prices, then I am ok enduring a 30 second ad. Content costs money — either the consumer pays directly or an advertiser pays. But people don’t make movies for free — at least not if they want to continue making movies.

Also, ads in YouTube — the content creator enables that so they can get paid.

[dankent]

You could always subscribe and get ad free viewing.

That way they can pay for the good service they provide without needing advertisers.

[PeachPlum]

Even when you press "pop-out" on the player