Friggin YouTube Ads…

Last Updated on: 30th April 2020, 12:03 pm

Everybody has the right to make a dollar. I respect that. But these ads on YouTube videos are getting way the hell out of hand. I just watched a 47 second video preceded by, no joke, a 2 minute advertisement. And this isn’t the first time this has happened. Not by a long shot. I think the longest one I’ve personally sat through was about 6 minutes, but I’ve heard stories of them running upwards of 10, which is just insane. Even worse is that I’m pretty sure there’s a way to skip them, but since a bunch of the goddamned buttons on the YouTube video player aren’t properly labeled, I can’t do that because blind guy over here. Sure I could experiment and mash buttons until I find the right one and I normally would, but the last time I played around with it (which granted was a long time ago) I somehow turned the sound off and it took much messing about and eventually a pass or 2 through the system with CCleaner to put things right again. Nope, no hitting the same button and having the sound come back for me. I swear some other blindy somewhere figured out which button skipped ads, but I can’t for the life of me remember which button it was. Somebody? Anybody?

But to the larger point, there shouldn’t be an urgent need to skip ads. If most of them were a reasonable length, I wouldn’t even be writing this. It really isn’t that difficult. If you can’t say something in the length of a traditional TV ad, we don’t want to hear it. Thirty seconds max should be all you need. And under no circumstances should the commercial ever be longer than what I showed up planning to watch. I’m not asking for much, I don’t think. I just don’t want to be held hostage by ad agencies who think they’re documentary filmmakers.

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4 Comments

  1. If there *is* a magical hot key that enables ad skippage, you’ll be my hero for life if you share it!

  2. There used to be a thing that happens when you refresh the page that makes the ad screw off. I seem to find that works less and less these days, though. Also I have no freaking idea if the ads show up on videos you’ve embedded. I assume no–otherwise you’ve got places like news sites and the like what might not do such things, but I’ve been wrong before.

    1. I’ve never seen an ad show when watching an embedded video, so I think you’re right about that. They only seem to play when you’re on YouTube proper.

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