You Tube and Ad Blockers

[George Yetka]

I get it. I went a long time without paying and just suffered the ads. I hung out at a friend house and he had the subscription it was so nice that I got one myself. Its been 6 months or so. What I need to do now is cancel spotify and use youtube music

[Allan Dozier]

I watch a lot of YT and don't find the ads that obtrusive. In a 20 minute video it seems they are are 2 to 3 maybe and most can be skipped in 5 seconds. I would certainly subscribe if the fee was more reasonable but not $15. I subscribe to USA Today for $5.33 and NYT for $4. If YT was 3 or 4 per month then I would sign up.
For the ads that you can't skip in 5 seconds I often click on another tab until I hear the ad finished then click back.

[Edward Weber]

Seems that You Tube no longer wants anyone to view without ads, or else pay a ransom. Has anyone else ran into this, and what did you do?

Pay a ransom?
You're getting free content, you have to watch a few commercials from advertisers just like network television, this is how it's free, advertisers pay so you don't have to.
When you've had enough, you pay to get cable, streaming or for YT premium.
Most people don't give away anything for free, I know I don't

[Bill Howatt]

I agree, Allan, YT's price is just too much.

[Mark Wedel]

To me, the ads in youtube have gotten a lot worse over the past few years.
Back then, my recollection was that I'd see some ads before the video, and it would be least 15 minutes of watching a video before youtube would put in more ads (ads that the video maker puts in are something that youtube can not control much).
But now, I'll get ads before the videos, sometimes another set of ads 1-2 minutes later. A 10 minute video may now have 3 sets of ads in it.
I don't think youtubes cost has gone up 3x - maybe ad revenue (how much they charge) for the ads is way down. Or maybe they are just trying to make more money.

[Pat Germain]

YouTube is like anything else; 90% of it is crap. But 10% is really good and I really like it. And that 10% is a LOT of content. I don't mind sitting through 30 second ads at all. Anything longer I typically skip. (If you repeatedly skip ads, you will eventually have to watch them as the Skip feature will be disabled for a while.) Yeah, the ad rellevance to content watched is completely bonkers, but so what. I typically mute the commercials anyway.

I'm seeing YouTube as becoming more and more of a value. You can now get local channels and NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube TV. Combine that with ad-free videos and that's a good deal.

Just for fun, here are some of my favorite YouTube channels:

- Bourbon Moth
- The Wood Whisperer
- Side Projects with Simon Whistler (this guy has a lot of fascinating videos and few duds)
- Joe Scott (You can find hundreds of videos about the Dyatlov Pass incident with crazy theories about aliens and monsters. Joe Scott did a video about a scientist who published a paper which very convincingly explained the whole thing with no paranormal activity whatsoever. Imagine that.)
- Trail Recon
- Disney Food Blog and Allears.net (Absolutely ESSENTIAL if you're doing a Disney World trip.)
- Brian Lagerstrom and America's Test Kitchen (Cooking channels.)

[Bill George]

We went to fiber totally un-related to cable, the old was MediaCom and it was also the cable and cost skyrocketed. Fiber is not really cheap but so fast and no down time and dealing with support who really DID Not Care. We get local digital TV off the air and subscribe to Discovery Plus $10 per month and NO ads. Also have Pluto TV which is zero cost but really have not used much.