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Comment by RandomBK | Hacker News Reader

I feel this was the inevitable outcome of the increased availability/popularity/awareness of ad blockers - a tragedy of the commons scenario that's set us on an escalating feedback loop that won't end well for anyone involved.

EDIT: I do wonder if the price point of youtube premium is too high to capture an audience that simply doesn't want ads but doesn't care about any other features. $6/mo feels higher than the typical per-user ad revenue.

EDIT2: While I don't know youtube's average revenue per user, both Facebook and Google's ARPU for the NA segment is ~$100-$200/y, which would put $6/mo quite close to the replacement cost of lost ads revenue.

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> I do wonder if the price point of youtube premium is too high to capture an audience that simply doesn't want ads

It's this plus the fact that I get virtually no value-add with YouTube. I have to fight with its algorithmic recommendations more than I would ever want to if I were paying any money for the service. I also don't want YouTube Music and would like it completely removed from my YouTube experience altogether. My music listening is done through a separate universe using my own collection.

I would happily pay money for a service that could provide the videos I watch regularly with a reasonable recommendation system that worked for me. And it needs to be priced for basically what it is: network egress.

I'm curious about that myself. We dropped our Youtube premium family plan when they upped the price to $22. We just recently got an email that Paramount was doubling our Paramount+ subscription price and "adding" Showtime. I don't want showtime. I just want to pay a small price to be ad free. The lower price tier is with Ads.

The trouble is apparently that Ads are worth more to these companies than ad-free subscribers.

agree with the last part. The average YouTube user seems to be clicking through ads more often than we think. This is similar to credit cards, where banks get most of their interest revenue from few users.

YouTube brought this on themselves by ratcheting up the ads like crazy. Back in the day I preferred YT because they were one of the only video sites that didn't have preroll ads. YouTube used to basically have adsense ads and little banners below the video for years. Unobtrusive and I didn't mind them at all.

Then they added postroll ads. Then preroll ads. Then midroll ads. With these ads I find YouTube unusable for any period of time.

yes, recently YT is just becoming extremely sh!tty.

Ok, I thought it was just me. For the past several weeks I've noticed a marked uptick in ADs on YouTube. Just last night I was watching a short (~5min) video on how to clay bar your car and there were almost more ADs than content. I even completed the survey before the video thinking that would buy me some time. Nope!

I'm okay with this if it means more platforms start to offer paid access with no ads. There are so many ad supported services out there that don't even have a paid option.

> EDIT2: While I don't know youtube's average revenue per user, both Facebook and Google's ARPU for the NA segment is ~$100-$200/y, which would put $6/mo quite close to the replacement cost of lost ads revenue.

$100/12 = $8.33

$200/12 = $16.66

It will end just fine. It'll become a bit harder to adblock, less people will do it as a result, and because of that it will drop off the radar again and we can keep adblocking as usual.

All Google has to do is remove the dependency on the users browser from the "advertising" system. No other form of advertising in history required users to partake in the process of displaying the ad. The only reason we can block them is because they're forcing us into the process. Calling them "ads" is a euphemism, they're tracking mechanisms first and foremost.

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