Because that has been tried so many times over the decades.
The good sites put effort in to curate their ads and make sure they are things their audiences would enjoy. Lots of webcomics STILL have blog posts about doing this. Same with one of the more popular “steam deck” websites.
The problem is that this doesn’t work. Because people don’t permitlist those sites. They just block everything for the exact same reasons “I pirate it and if I like it I’ll buy it” was always a blatant lie for the vast majority of people (and no, I don’t care who consider themselves exceptions to that).
So when curated and “good” ads have almost zero benefit over shitty and obnoxious ones? The focus stops being “let’s serve good ads and trust our users to have our backs” and more “What can we do to actually get ANY ad revenue out of this so that we can keep the lights on?”
Because that has been tried so many times over the decades.
When? “Will it Blend?” is about the only time I can think of when a company went in an alternative direction and turned their ads into entertainment and was quite successful at that. How many products do even have as little as an official unboxing video? Stuff like the SteamDeck teardown is what I would love every company doing for all their product. But it’s super rare. Why limit your ads to 30sec fake nonsense when you could have 15min of talking about your product in detail?
They just block everything for the exact same reasons
There wouldn’t be a need or even the ability to block anything if it wouldn’t be forced on the user. If Youtube had a “show me a random ad” button, I’d click it. I don’t hate ads. I hate bad ads that are forced in my face when I don’t need them. I have plenty of downtime where I wouldn’t mind seeing what new products are around. Gameify that stuff. Make it interesting. Make it explorable. Make it interactive. You have million dollar budget, mountains of collected data and random garbage forced into the users face is the best you can come up with?
“What can we do to actually get ANY ad revenue out of this so that we can keep the lights on?”
You are forgetting that there is an advertiser in all this. People that care about getting clicks on ads will have no problem tricking users into accidentally clicking on ads. But why are the advertisers themselves ok with that? If I want to advertise a product I’d not be interested in paying for accidental clicks users were tricked into, I’d be interested in finding users that are interested in the product I want to sell. And I really don’t see current ads doing that very well. They might be better than literally nothing, but I really don’t see them being better than all the potential ways to make better ads.
When? “Will it Blend?” is about the only time I can think of when a company went in an alternative direction and turned their ads into entertainment and was quite successful at that.
I mean, if your goal is for the ads to be entertaining, people REALLY liked Chuck (high concentration of chuds aside) and Community. And Soap Operas literally came out of the idea of integrating advertisements into media.
Also… it is not just a meme that people are increasingly more interested in the ads than the stoppages during the Super Bowl.
Also, this was a driving force behind Flash. Ads that were “games”.
But my point is more the efforts to make less obtrusive ads that are visually appealing AND relevant to the viewers.
How many products do even have as little as an official unboxing video? Stuff like the SteamDeck teardown is what I would love every company doing for all their product. But it’s super rare. Why limit your ads to 30sec fake nonsense when you could have 15min of talking about your product in detail?
Sorry. You are talking about wanting 15 minute pre-roll ads? Do you want to maybe rethink that? Please. I beg you. Don’t put that evil into the world.
Also: What you are describing is literally an infomercial. Ron Popeil’s rotisserie oven and bigass syringe come to mind, but also Vince “I got my ass beat by a prostitute” Offer and Billy “Never met anything I didn’t want to snort” Mays (RIP) come to mind.
Also… with a word from our sponsor, we have Linus “I can’t have a warranty because people would attack my family” Sebastien and LMG. Or any other heavily sponsored review channel. And… people run “sponsor block”. While watching a fucking ad for the latest Samsung phone.
There wouldn’t be a need or even the ability to block anything if it wouldn’t be forced on the user. If Youtube had a “show me a random ad” button, I’d click it. I don’t hate ads. I hate bad ads that are forced in my face when I don’t need them.
This is right up there with “I’ll buy it if I like it after I fully watch all twelve seasons”. Sure there are people who would willingly watch ten ads per hour if it meant that others didn’t have to see any. Uhm… Okay, I actually can’t even pretend that is true.
Or, to be slightly less mocking: Subscription models. Those have proven to be incredibly lucrative to people who “made it big” already. They are a constant struggle for up and comers. Because I would probably throw a few bucks at J Kenji Lopez-Alt every month if it got me a steady feed of recipes and videos. As much as I like him, I can’t see myself doing that for Ethan Chlebowski because he is still nowhere near as established and is very much a “home cook” in terms of “knowledge”.
Because, trust me, all your favorite content creators would love it if they didn’t need to do any sponsored content or negotiate with brands/marketing firms and just got a giant check in the mail every week from their fans. Very few can pull that off to the degree required to make “quality” content. Otherwise nobody would have ever heard of Raid Shadow Legends and Better Help.
Or, if I can move to the greater root problem of “how to make money while making media”, let’s look at video games. Some of the pseudo-live games will have a LOT of DLC. Like literally hundreds of cosmetic skins that have no bearing whatsoever on the gameplay and exist almost entirely as a “tip jar” to fund the free content updates. And… people lose their mind. And they use it as an argument that the game is bad because if you wanted to buy all 500 skins for your player character in an FPS that has been getting steady updates for 4 years now, it would cost you 300 dollars. THE HORROR. FUCK LAZY DEVS!!!
I have plenty of downtime where I wouldn’t mind seeing what new products are around. Gameify that stuff. Make it interesting. Make it explorable. Make it interactive. You have million dollar budget, mountains of collected data and random garbage forced into the users face is the best you can come up with?
Again, see the entire concept of sponsored media
You are forgetting that there is an advertiser in all this. People that care about getting clicks on ads will have no problem tricking users into accidentally clicking on ads. But why are the advertisers themselves ok with that? If I want to advertise a product I’d not be interested in paying for accidental clicks users were tricked into, I’d be interested in finding users that are interested in the product I want to sell. And I really don’t see current ads doing that very well. They might be better than literally nothing, but I really don’t see them being better than all the potential ways to make better ads.
Because advertisement works.
A few years back, one of the WWE shows basically ran an ad for “fuck time island” or whatever it was called every single commercial break. It was some sort of reality dating show or whatever. And you could watch in real time as the squaredcircle crowd started off by complaining and mocking and very rapidly changed their rules so they could have a discussion thread on it every single week where people were actually interested.
Or just think about how many times people have muttered 'eat fresh" while reading up on public transit in many cities.
They might be better than literally nothing, but I really don’t see them being better than all the potential ways to make better ads.
Again. Attempts have been made for literally decades. Sites curated really quality ads and people still ran adblock. Youtubers try to work with good companies for their sponsorships and people still run sponsor block. Hell, people often won’t even click the affiliate link to buy the product they just watched a 30 minute review of. The “better” way is something that people either haven’t blocked yet or can’t block.
Because that has been tried so many times over the decades.
The good sites put effort in to curate their ads and make sure they are things their audiences would enjoy. Lots of webcomics STILL have blog posts about doing this. Same with one of the more popular “steam deck” websites.
The problem is that this doesn’t work. Because people don’t permitlist those sites. They just block everything for the exact same reasons “I pirate it and if I like it I’ll buy it” was always a blatant lie for the vast majority of people (and no, I don’t care who consider themselves exceptions to that).
So when curated and “good” ads have almost zero benefit over shitty and obnoxious ones? The focus stops being “let’s serve good ads and trust our users to have our backs” and more “What can we do to actually get ANY ad revenue out of this so that we can keep the lights on?”
When? “Will it Blend?” is about the only time I can think of when a company went in an alternative direction and turned their ads into entertainment and was quite successful at that. How many products do even have as little as an official unboxing video? Stuff like the SteamDeck teardown is what I would love every company doing for all their product. But it’s super rare. Why limit your ads to 30sec fake nonsense when you could have 15min of talking about your product in detail?
There wouldn’t be a need or even the ability to block anything if it wouldn’t be forced on the user. If Youtube had a “show me a random ad” button, I’d click it. I don’t hate ads. I hate bad ads that are forced in my face when I don’t need them. I have plenty of downtime where I wouldn’t mind seeing what new products are around. Gameify that stuff. Make it interesting. Make it explorable. Make it interactive. You have million dollar budget, mountains of collected data and random garbage forced into the users face is the best you can come up with?
You are forgetting that there is an advertiser in all this. People that care about getting clicks on ads will have no problem tricking users into accidentally clicking on ads. But why are the advertisers themselves ok with that? If I want to advertise a product I’d not be interested in paying for accidental clicks users were tricked into, I’d be interested in finding users that are interested in the product I want to sell. And I really don’t see current ads doing that very well. They might be better than literally nothing, but I really don’t see them being better than all the potential ways to make better ads.
Let’s break that down
I mean, if your goal is for the ads to be entertaining, people REALLY liked Chuck (high concentration of chuds aside) and Community. And Soap Operas literally came out of the idea of integrating advertisements into media.
Also… it is not just a meme that people are increasingly more interested in the ads than the stoppages during the Super Bowl.
Also, this was a driving force behind Flash. Ads that were “games”.
But my point is more the efforts to make less obtrusive ads that are visually appealing AND relevant to the viewers.
Sorry. You are talking about wanting 15 minute pre-roll ads? Do you want to maybe rethink that? Please. I beg you. Don’t put that evil into the world.
Also: What you are describing is literally an infomercial. Ron Popeil’s rotisserie oven and bigass syringe come to mind, but also Vince “I got my ass beat by a prostitute” Offer and Billy “Never met anything I didn’t want to snort” Mays (RIP) come to mind.
Also… with a word from our sponsor, we have Linus “I can’t have a warranty because people would attack my family” Sebastien and LMG. Or any other heavily sponsored review channel. And… people run “sponsor block”. While watching a fucking ad for the latest Samsung phone.
This is right up there with “I’ll buy it if I like it after I fully watch all twelve seasons”. Sure there are people who would willingly watch ten ads per hour if it meant that others didn’t have to see any. Uhm… Okay, I actually can’t even pretend that is true.
Or, to be slightly less mocking: Subscription models. Those have proven to be incredibly lucrative to people who “made it big” already. They are a constant struggle for up and comers. Because I would probably throw a few bucks at J Kenji Lopez-Alt every month if it got me a steady feed of recipes and videos. As much as I like him, I can’t see myself doing that for Ethan Chlebowski because he is still nowhere near as established and is very much a “home cook” in terms of “knowledge”.
Because, trust me, all your favorite content creators would love it if they didn’t need to do any sponsored content or negotiate with brands/marketing firms and just got a giant check in the mail every week from their fans. Very few can pull that off to the degree required to make “quality” content. Otherwise nobody would have ever heard of Raid Shadow Legends and Better Help.
Or, if I can move to the greater root problem of “how to make money while making media”, let’s look at video games. Some of the pseudo-live games will have a LOT of DLC. Like literally hundreds of cosmetic skins that have no bearing whatsoever on the gameplay and exist almost entirely as a “tip jar” to fund the free content updates. And… people lose their mind. And they use it as an argument that the game is bad because if you wanted to buy all 500 skins for your player character in an FPS that has been getting steady updates for 4 years now, it would cost you 300 dollars. THE HORROR. FUCK LAZY DEVS!!!
Again, see the entire concept of sponsored media
Because advertisement works.
A few years back, one of the WWE shows basically ran an ad for “fuck time island” or whatever it was called every single commercial break. It was some sort of reality dating show or whatever. And you could watch in real time as the squaredcircle crowd started off by complaining and mocking and very rapidly changed their rules so they could have a discussion thread on it every single week where people were actually interested.
Or just think about how many times people have muttered 'eat fresh" while reading up on public transit in many cities.
Again. Attempts have been made for literally decades. Sites curated really quality ads and people still ran adblock. Youtubers try to work with good companies for their sponsorships and people still run sponsor block. Hell, people often won’t even click the affiliate link to buy the product they just watched a 30 minute review of. The “better” way is something that people either haven’t blocked yet or can’t block.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
SteamDeck teardown
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.