Unskippable YouTube

The first experience of seeing ads on YouTube for me was around 2008 or 09. They were usually promotions for the latest movies that got trailers or headed to theaters. I remember lots of T-Mobile commercials with the one woman who was always in a pink dress. There probably was other ones, but that's what I know of for that time. But these were at the beginning of videos. If it wasn't an adblock being used, I would see the same ads for stuff like Burger King back in 2013 and 14.

If you're using a game console for the video site, ads are common. Until this summer, it wasn't heavily populated with trying to promote laundry detergent, McDonald's, everything in between the sun. Now, it's a cesspool of trying to have ten ads in a video that lasts a couple hours. Maybe more. Maybe less. Some of these are on YouTube. Some of these on the video makers. It is impossible to avoid ads.

It's a business. But like television, this is something that annoys many. I doubt you'll get a straight up answer from YouTube or Google. They have their automated response bullshit and not even bother to help. For these two companies, they don't understand their audiences. Over the years, they make these changes and it makes navigating videos frustrating. Add in the ads and it's more difficult to watch on a console version of the site. I wish I could say there is a better alternative, but there isn't.

Dailymotion and Vimeo exist, but they are much smaller. We're not in 2002 where anyone can create a site and hope to get a share of the audience. Stuff like Myspace died out (or is low on viewership) as Facebook and Twitter grew to so high of a level. A lot of these big sites are extremely huge that I'm not sure a competitor could outdo any of them. There's nothing bad about having an ad on a video, but when it's overblown, that's where it gets aggravating.

I'm not going to give up YouTube, but it might be less use compared to the last couple of years. They are getting too greedy and it's only a matter of time before others give up on using game consoles for video watching.