What happened to YouTube? Part 4

/ Alex Good

OK, something is definitely going on here. I’ve previously posted on how long the ads are getting on YouTube, most recently just a couple of days ago in response to having a 28-minute ad dropped into an interview I was watching. Today I had a 31:15 ad in one podcast and then just a bit later on a different podcast getting a 40:37 bomb dropped.

What is the point of this? Nobody is going to watch a 30 or 40-minute ad or infomercial or entirely separate podcast inserted into the podcast they’re watching. Nobody. But given how frequently these things are popping up now it’s clearly part of a conscious decision YouTube is making. Meanwhile, why would somebody even be making these half-hour ads? They must know they just play as aggravating.

I guess somebody is looking at the data and figuring that somehow it works, but I can’t see it. The platform does seem to be transforming into something new though, even if I’m not sure what the endgame is.

11 thoughts on “What happened to YouTube? Part 4”

    • Hey, your avatar has gone steampunk!

      That reddit thread (and others linked to it) doesn’t really answer the question though aside from saying that it makes YouTube more money even if everything about it sucks. And then there are a lot of people posting ways to get around it.

      It still seems odd to me because it seems a new direction they’re taking and it’s a real shift that doesn’t make sense on the face of it since I wouldn’t have thought it was that effective AND it really damages the user experience.

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      • My other avatar was steampunk too, I got fed up of being old though so made a younger one 🤣🤣
        I guess if the ads keep going that way people just will give up on YouTube and make do with tick-tock or Instagram etc. actually just asked Phil -his computer doesn’t have the same paid for YouTube as mine, and he says he gets a 30 second ad at the start of watching anything and that’s about it, rarely gets anything in the middle of a thingy.
        Also it seems to depend on how you watch it, as it’s different on the iPad and different again on the TV. It’s all very convoluted.

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