YouTube is running an experiment asking some users to disable their ad blockers or pay for a premium subscription, or they will not be allowed to watch videos.
I do understand that if companies running ad-supported models, they need to make sure users are actually watching those ads. Seems logically to me - no ads mean no money, and no money means no sustainable business model.
On the other side, as a user, I just can’t browse the internet without an ad-blocker any more. They just got so annoying and sometimes even break the actual website.
But to be honest, I don’t see an alternative to ad-supported models except paying money directly via subscriptions plans etc. But this also will not work in the long term. I just can’t pay afford to pay a subscription for each website I visit during the day.
The biggest issue, I guess, is the amount and obnoxiousness of the ads. I could live quite well with seeing one ad banner per page-worth of scrolling, if it’s for example off to the side in a specific “your ad here” place.
Or if the ads would be thematically related to the topic at hand. I don’t want to be reminded of how much our devices listen in on us by seeing ads for diapers on a website for posting news about the Ukraine War, just because I happened to talk with my gf about how my step mom has another child now. But seeing ads for a website to buy camping tools, on a website for hiking backpacks, is fine by me.
Unfortunately those types of non-intrusive ads probably aren’t what’s raking in the most money.
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I do understand that if companies running ad-supported models, they need to make sure users are actually watching those ads. Seems logically to me - no ads mean no money, and no money means no sustainable business model.
On the other side, as a user, I just can’t browse the internet without an ad-blocker any more. They just got so annoying and sometimes even break the actual website.
But to be honest, I don’t see an alternative to ad-supported models except paying money directly via subscriptions plans etc. But this also will not work in the long term. I just can’t pay afford to pay a subscription for each website I visit during the day.
The biggest issue, I guess, is the amount and obnoxiousness of the ads. I could live quite well with seeing one ad banner per page-worth of scrolling, if it’s for example off to the side in a specific “your ad here” place.
Or if the ads would be thematically related to the topic at hand. I don’t want to be reminded of how much our devices listen in on us by seeing ads for diapers on a website for posting news about the Ukraine War, just because I happened to talk with my gf about how my step mom has another child now. But seeing ads for a website to buy camping tools, on a website for hiking backpacks, is fine by me.
Unfortunately those types of non-intrusive ads probably aren’t what’s raking in the most money.