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Comment by tyingq | Hacker News Reader

Google is very concerned about ads that visually block text content. But somehow forcing ads in front of videos on YouTube isn't the same exact thing?

Both force an ad to be looked at before granting you access to the content you came for. I don't get the distinction.

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Not to defend the ad industry, but I don't think these are equivalent. YouTube ads don't block content so much as they delay it, much like inline ads.

The equivalent YouTube ad would be if it started playing and didn't pause the video you're trying to watch.

Not sure I understand. Both are an overlay blocking content. I suspect Google would still punish an interstitial overlay with a countdown timer that dismissed it. If you don't click, YouTube sometimes makes you watch 30+ seconds of ads.

Here's Google's post about it: https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2016/08/helping-users-easi...

I've seen a couple of five minute long ads on Youtube. I really doubt anyone intentionally watches them.

To be honest I've seen a couple advertisements that I watched the full ~5 minutes. Both were game trailers that were really interesting. I would have rather had a "click here to view the actual trailer video instead of the ad version" button though. I was sold after the first 2 minutes, but couldn't see the full name of the game until the end.

Game trailers as ads?

Over 95% of the stuff I watch on Youtube is gameplays, collagehumor and tech reviews, yet all my ads are diapers or clothing softeners. I've no idea why their algorithm sucks so much for my account.

Unless they figure you’re already going to buy it and don’t bother targeting you?

I've seen multi-minute prerolls on videos <1min long.

Why does pausing the video matter? Pausing the video sounds more like blocking content than not.

There's two kinds of on-video ads on YouTube. The ones that you described, which play before or during the video that you're watching, pausing the video, and then the ads that display in a little overlay at the bottom of the video.

I don't see how either of these would be alright by this new pseudo-policy, but your argument most definitely does not apply to the latter kind.

I'll take a pop up ad over and inline any day at least I know it's not a part of the content and the close button is usually in the same place-ish.

In line ads always confuse the hell out of me especially now that they are getting so camouflaged into the content and content sites have the scroll to next piece of content functionality.

Here is something that is equivalent, page level ads, which are identical to what Google calls interstitials -https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/6245304?hl=en

How will Google punish themselves? Or will Google just punish the publishers who bothered to follow their repeated recommendations to run page level ads on their site?

Watched the video, and they seem to rationalize it because the full page ad displays "between page loads on your site".

Meaning it won't show when coming from a Google search, until the user navigates to a second page of the same site.

I guess it's okay to irritate users if it's at least one step away from search?

Google owns one of them, so there's that distinction...

Have you ever seen the little "x" in the corner of google display ads? If you click it, you're asked for the reason you're objecting to the ad. Among them "ad covers content".

Meaning: you shouldn't always assume the worst, especially if there's evidence against it.

The YouTube ads cover the content by design. Google owns YouTube. Google isn't going to take action on their own site.

This option is available only on website. The app doesn't support it. Yet.

I think the difference is the potential for abuse. It's not possible for a YouTube advertiser to make a YouTube ad appear to be a system popup or for it to attempt to take over my browser experience by full screening. Keep in mind, Google has been fine with popup ads until 2017.

It could have to do with the fact that video and text articles are different mediums.

I'll bite. Visually blocking text vs video. Either requires a click (or long wait) to get to the content. What is different?

In fact, there's often less waiting with overlays on top of text content.

The difference is how advertising has been done traditionally. Think about TV vs. print. Advertisements need to be interspersed in both mediums, but how it is accomplished is different based on the medium. Why would it be different just because we now consume both on a different platform?

I say non-skippable YouTube video ads are more annoying and affect more people. Go punish yourself Google. Pathetic.

Maybe Google Search is punishing search scores for YouTube videos because of ads, but since most online videos exist only on YouTube, those results generally still rank highly regardless of the penalty?

Does this apply to twitters full-page sign up pop up?

To deal with that, right click on "Inspect element", mouse upwards until the whole popup is selected, and click "Delete Node".

this solution is absurd, do you understand?

It works. You can get rid of many annoying pop-ups and overlays that way. It even works on dumber paywalls.

True, but it isn't very practical and doesn't actually answer the question. It does work, however.

given that it's not automatic and it doesn't work on mobile or for people who have no experience in html, it doesn't work and it should not be even considered as a solution, because internet is not for tech-savy people and this discussion is about marketing and internet advertisement which is for all people.

so no, it doesn't work on a larger scale. it's like suggesting to hack MS Windows checks if provided licence key is valid in order to use OS. It works, but for narrow audience, and we should discuss about how to solve issue for all users.

For desktop.

Not mobile.

(I had, at one point, some 2,000 or so personally modified wepage CSS files under Stylish for just this sort of crap.)

Do as I say, not as I do.

I suppose it's a matter of practicality - with most text heavy sites you can put ads around the text and it works just fine. But with something like Youtube, that approach isn't really going to be as effective because people generally won't be scrolling around the page.

At least I don't have to play a hidden object adventure game to find the close button for YouTube ads.

This is only really because you're already aware of where YouTube's buttons are and how they work. If you visited any given other website often enough, it'd be more or less the same.

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