As much I hate YouTube ads it makes sense they fight hard to prevent ad blocking. It must cost a fortune to run something the size and complexity of YouTube
Online services seeking revenue isn't a bad thing. However, offering the service for free (or without ads) initially until all competitors are dead and then seeking revenue shouldn't be considered benign.
Doesn't that mean that there were at least 3 years before that when they didn't serve ads? I can certainly remember the days when you didn't need an ad-blocker to watch videos without ads. How are the other video hosting sites from those days doing now?
Sure, but how long until they became profitable? Running at a loss to keep competition away sounds anti-competitive, but sure, there might not be a good way to tell a bad bet from an evil one.
I’d say a good 90% of ads I view on YouTube mobile (I have an adblocker on desktop) are for Google Fiber which 1) is a Google product and therefore doesn’t generate income on ads sales and 2) I’m already a customer of so they literally can’t make a sale on me with the ad. It’s completely useless so I should be able to block the ads as they serve no purpose whatsoever.
The other 10% are the scam “get solar for free” ads.
If this is the attempt of some dept to increase ads for whatever metrics or bonuses, I suggest that this move will not increase ads much at all.
Many of us will just pay for premium to avoid. Some of us will engage in the non-stop war of ad block blocker blocker and perhaps ramp up to some other caching / buffering system that blocks the ads another way that makes it seem they run or whatever.
Sure a few grandmas who had a blocker setup for them will capitulate, but I would bet if you are aiming for some sort of 2% increase it will fall very short.
I block ads primarily for security, and because I abhor being forced alcohol ads and similar without a way to block at the ip level.
If adblockers are blocked I will be forced to go premium or switch to peertube / rumble / fbook, etc. I can't do ads, sanity, security, and time wasting are not in my future time blocks.
Although I would say, that some ads are interesting from a mar-tech / creative interest, and I wouldn't find a separate tab with a list of 'ads that may interest you' similar to the home page - strange I know - but that way I could avoid the security concerns and other concerns, and choose a few that could offer interesting offers.
Don't forget allowing them to more closely identify you through your credit card and likely phone number "for verification" by creating a business relationship. I'm not sure what their dark pattern situation for canceling is though, I haven't heard of google being particularly bad there.
First ad is always someone yelling at me - instantly making me hate whatever they are selling.
Second ad is always some kind of shitty mobile game that has more often then not an overly sexualized character.