YouTube is waging a war against adblockers...and losing.
  • YouTube is intensifying efforts to combat adblockers, including blocking video playback and warning users of potential account suspension.
  • Increased ads on YouTube have driven many users to adblockers, hurting both YouTube’s ad revenue and content creators reliant on ad-based income.
  • Despite these measures, many users are leaving YouTube or finding workarounds, leading creators to seek alternative revenue streams off-platform.
  • ArchRecord@lemm.eeEnglish
    802·
    3 months ago

    Good fucking riddance.

    The sooner they realize the enshittification isn’t working, and is only increasing the amount of people participating in the largest global consumer boycott ever, the sooner they’ll actually try to improve the platform, or die resisting.

    YouTube has continuously made the experience worse, adding more and more ads to users not using ad blockers, to compensate for those using them. Guess what, genius? People block ads because they suck. Adding more won’t stop people from using ad blockers!

    And they have the audacity to try selling YouTube Premium for a whopping $14/mo (nowhere near the actual revenue generated from a user watching ads,) then don’t even provide any real benefit past ad blocking, after they deliberately killed YouTube Originals because it didn’t instantaneously bring in immense profits.

    And the content creators I personally know have shown me the amount of money they get from Premium users, and it’s sometimes less than the value of an ad-supported user, even though the Premium user generates more revenue than an ad-supported one.

    I would pay for YouTube Premium if it was a reasonable rate, and actually came with exclusive content, similar to Nebula, but it doesn’t.

    Instead, YouTube has continued to make the interface more and more bloated, slow, and inefficient, and increased the incentives for low-quality, mass-produced content, all while not paying creators enough to support themselves on YouTube’s own platform.

    YouTube can’t see itself as being the cause of its own issues, because it’s blinded by bad ad-driven fiscal policy that has only been a proven failure.

    • WldFyre@lemm.eeEnglish
      6·
      3 months ago

      And the content creators I personally know have shown me the amount of money they get from Premium users, and it’s sometimes less than the value of an ad-supported user, even though the Premium user generates more revenue than an ad-supported one.

      Can you expand on this? I don’t follow what you mean here

        • WldFyre@lemm.eeEnglish
          6·
          3 months ago

          Every creator I’ve seen talk about it said they get more from Premium viewers, so that’s why I’m confused

          • ArchRecord@lemm.eeEnglish
            3·
            3 months ago

            I’m not entirely sure myself, but the people I’m talking to have much smaller channels than the ones I often see talking about their Premium earnings, so that may have something to do with it.

            I’m not sure if this has an impact as well, but I do know there has also been a lot of users spoofing their locations to regions where the cost of Premium is cheaper (and thus generates less revenue for everyone involved) the vast majority of their viewer numbers are from the US though, so that doesn’t seem to make much sense.

            I do believe it can simply vary in terms of revenue-per-view depending on the creator, though.

            Regardless, I think that, overall, YouTube and YouTubers would make more money if YouTube didn’t price Premium so high, and actually invested a portion of their profits into original content for subscribers. I have a hard time believing that YouTube is generating anywhere near $168/yr from ad supported users, compared to the monthly Premium subscriber cost.

            YouTube’s share of Google’s global revenue is around 10%, but it would need to account for nearly half of Google’s yearly revenue to be earning the same rate as Premium costs, and that’s already including current higher-paying Premium subscribers.

            Obviously, not every user is going to be buying Premium if it becomes cheaper, but YouTube isn’t incentivizing Premium users past just “please don’t use an adblocker, pay us instead.” which I think will inevitably lead to them just not converting enough new subscribers.

    • barsoap@lemm.eeEnglish
      6·
      3 months ago

      Those surfshark maps… ugh. No, I’m not searching for ublock origin. Why would I it’s been installed since time immemorial. You have to measure install base, not search interest. Leave search interest for celebrity gossip.

    • ticho@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      3 months ago

      Enshittification actually does work, but only up to a point. Unfortunately, all the corporations have all the subtlety of a Sherman tank, so they always go all in on it.