This is real pie in the sky stuff, hence it being on the halfbakery:
Being a resident of Australia (being the arse end of the world, consumer rights-wise), the trend lately has been for youtube ads to get longer and longer and in fact has seen the removal of the skip button for all but a few ads. I might end up having to watch a 45 second unskippable ad, just to view 10 second video. This is obviously absurd.
Now, I understand youtube has to earn money, and that's either going to be via subscription or advertising. I'm just saying that long unskippable ads generate a visceral hate within me that means I will never, ever, patronise any of the companies advertising thusly. This is not a unique opinion, and the advertisers must not understand this to be the case, otherwise they would have already stopped.
So, my solution here is to force youtube's hand. Create a pledge, or change.org or something, basically saying that you commit to never patronise a vendor who advertises on youtube with a long (>15 second), unskippable ad. Once this gets some traction, I think we would see a shift in the approach.
For the record, I think advertisers can get their message through in the 5-second intro, after which you can choose to skip or watch the rest of the ad. If the intro is intriguing, I will often keep watching, and have in the past been influenced to buy the product.
It's just the long, unskippable ad format yields such a strong negative response in me that it can't be good business, for anyone. I'm certain that I'm not alone here.-- Custardguts, Nov 09 2016 uBlock Origin https://en.wikipedi.../wiki/UBlock_OriginWhy complain about advertisements when you can simply block them? [Aq_Bi, Nov 12 2016] A similar problem: sometimes my wife and I stream TV shows. We don't have a really fast internet connection, but the system used to stream the TV shows seems to be optimized well enough that we get few glitches and tolerable digital artifacts. However it seems that many advertisers assume that everyone has a high bandwidth connection. That means that the ads often take an extremely long time (I think the worst case was 15 minutes), and of course going that slowly, it is practically impossible to grasp what the ad is about.
I guess that rant wasn't directly related to this idea except that people creating advertising really need to grow a brain. It would help the companies who need to advertise and the consumers who might actually buy their stuff if advertised to respectfully.-- scad mientist, Nov 09 2016 People watch ads?-- pocmloc, Nov 09 2016 How about, for the good of humanity, someone create an online class that teaches what is and is not highly annoying to end users and how to make effective online ads.
Part 1 would be a simple web page with no ads. Part 2 would be a video course. the course content would be about 10 seconds long, but to get to it you'd end up watching 10 minutes of various intolerable ad practices form simulated (and/or real) ads. Part3 would discuss creative ideas for making ads that actually ADD value to the web page they are on such that it's a win-win.-- scad mientist, Nov 09 2016 // the arse end of the world, consumer rights-wise //
... and in just about every other way, too.
Except your Head of State, of course.-- 8th of 7, Nov 09 2016 //Head of State// Sp.: 'head of State.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Nov 09 2016 <incoming anti-ad rant> 2 things about internet ads that annoy me: 1: Having (for example) a 30 second ad before a 20 second video clip. That's just getting ridiculous. I could accept a 5 or 10 second ad. But the un-necessary extra stuff shouldn't be longer than the actual objective... 2: Say, for example, I go to the SEW Eurodrive website (motors & gearboxes). For the next (several) years, I get banners and pop-ups for SEW. But I don't need to be informed about SEW; I KNOW they exist and what they sell. A better advertising system would show me ads for ABB motors or Hitachi drive controllers or something related to what SEW sell. Or is that asking too much of Google's ad system? <anti-ad rant over>-- neutrinos_shadow, Nov 10 2016 I second [neutrinos_shadow]'s second point.
Also annoying are ads that update. Several times when I've been on a web page reading the content and part way though an ad catches my attention, when I start to read the ad and move my mouse towards it, it suddenly disappears and is replaced by something else. That's both annoying and anti-productive advertising. At the very least, if you're going to rotate through ads, have a "back" button.-- scad mientist, Nov 10 2016 Tee hee hee.
Worse again, are high bandwidth video ads. Some of us, who live in remote areas, have limited bandwidth and download totals. Every time I find a widget etc that can pause these things from downloading unless I click them, the ad mongers come up with a new way of deploying their ads.
....Which is why I never buy anything I see advertised in a disruptive way. We all should do that....-- Custardguts, Nov 10 2016 // the arse end of the world//
OH NO YOU DON'T...YOU DON'T GET TO STEAL OUR NEW TITLE...OH NO WAY BUDDY BOY. STEP BACK FROM THE PODIUM...-- blissmiss, Nov 10 2016 The problem with all of these mass-consumer-protest things is that there are thousands of different such schemes, and none of them ever has any impact.
What is needed is a single Consumers' Union, which I shall post henceforth.
<a short while later> On second thoughts not. It would just become another protest movement that never has any impact.<\aswl>-- MaxwellBuchanan, Nov 12 2016 I think there could be a browser add on that detects ...yellowbar then puts up images from your image file directory or a pretty swirling shape instead during those 5 seconds.-- beanangel, Nov 14 2016 random, halfbakery