YouTube is running a new experiment to limit usage on ad blockers by asking users to turn it off after three videos.
techcrunch.com
Currently, it seems to be just a test. Haven't noticed it myself. But I'm a heavy youtube user, and if my ad blocker stops working, I'll be royally pissed. This could lead to an arms-race between google and ad-block extensions, with the latter trying to counter-act detection mechanisms while the former tries to find new ways to force ads down our throats.
On the other hand, I have wondered before why Google has allowed ad-blockers this long. I think it might be because the number of users tech-savvy-enough to use them hasn't been high enough. Sure it's annoying to all the users, but from business-point-of-view it makes zero sense to allow users to opt out of ads, when your entire revenue model is based on advertising.
The advertising industry is far better at selling the idea of advertising than they are at selling the products they're being paid to market.
From a business point of view it makes zero sense to force users to watch ads for stuff they're never going to buy, or to watch the same ad over and over again
ad nauseam.
Advertising agencies like to pretend that numbers of views are a good proxy for increased ordering of products, but there's little reason to accept that this is true, and every reason to expect that it is false in many situations.
The famous ads that everyone remembers, and that even pass into popular culture, are usually so bad at selling products that the people who repeat the catchphrases or hum the jingles are often unable to recall the specific product being sold, and in many cases will link the misremembered advertising to a competitor's product.
There's a huge incentive for YouTube (or TV stations, for that matter) to simply bury viewers in as many ads as they will tolerate; Each ad shown represents money going from the advertiser to the broadcaster. But the missing link is whether they represent money going from the viewer to the advertiser - that's the service the advertiser wants to buy.
McDonalds would be much happier if their ad was seen ten times per viewer per week, leading to each viewer buying one more Big Mac, than with their ad being seen a hundred times per viewer per week, but not increasing Big Mac sales at all.
But YouTube gets paid ten times as much in the latter case, so guess how many ads you'll need to endure?
The whole system is broken; It's basically a big scam, with advertising agencies collecting money for selling something that almost certainly doesn't always exist. They get away with it, because it's impossible to separate the utterly ineffective advertising from the effective part of the business; We know that seeing ads increases our likelihood of buying something, but there's little evidence that this effect is still working the tenth, hundredth or thousandth time that an ad is imposed upon us.
Indeed, there's a real possibility that the impact of multiple viewings, and/or of intrusive and unwelcome pop-up ads or ads that block access to stuff we want to view, could leave viewers
less inclined to a favourable opinion about the product being advertised.
