The worst is when you are knee deep in a project or some hobby bullshit you can't figure out and you finally give up and go to YT hoping to find a tutorial, find said tutorial, and get fucking interrupted mid explanation by a fucking ad.
Like, bro, I'm just trying to put together my bicycle and I'm frustrated, can we please skip the Better Help ad for now? I don't need therapy, I need instructions.
It's like fucking rage bate sometimes man. Crashing out because I can't get my bike to work right and I get hit with "Do you think that there are waaaays that AI can help us naaaavigate vulnerability?"
I can't remember where on internet I saw it, but a woman suggested to YouTube to not put ads on a video of "How to do the Heimlich maneuver" and Youtube suggested upgrading to YouTube Premium.
The worst is when Im wrist deep in something too. Holding something together or have glue on my hands 😭 like I used siri to get here dont make me click now
Commercials weren't every 45 seconds and you weren't forced to pay more to avoid said ad which honestly, you could just ignore, but everything is just awful and I hate it here
Edit: didn't realize a half awake comment would have so much traction. Thanks y'all
I think that was technically a benefit. I say "technically" because of course, they were mostly there to sell things, but it the idea was also meant to be that you'd step away for a minute. (Perhaps while still being able to hear said commercials.)
Of course, from what I remember, a lot of people just sat and complained about them anyway.
It's been fascinating to see the difference in this subreddit. I see people talking about how they got their first iPod in high school. I had a CD player. (Which I now miss.)
They were also shows. It was a piece of scripted entertainment.
This is what gets me. When I'm looking for a tutorial or a visual instruction manual for something, and I get spammed with a fucking ad, it's awful. It's a different thing.
When we get hit with commercials on TV, it's expected, it's a break. A commercial break. But like, it feels weirdly OK. Think of it for live TV; the people on the other side need a break too.
On the YT though, it's purely intrusive, and the setting is usually different too. Like, why are you advertising to me while I'm trying to watch this instruction manual? Now isn't the time for this.
Imagine how ridiculous it would feel to be advertised to in a classroom setting. That is how I feel about it often.
Oh man. I can't imagine. I like music. It's always been something I've really dug into. I have had Spotify premium since the first week it was available in the US, and I've never used a radio service like Pandora. Prior to all this it was a pirates life for me and the iPod.
I have never had adds play during my music, ever, but I cannot imagine how awful that would be.
My wife uses YouTube because she claims there are live recordings / performances on there that aren’t on Spotify / Apple Music / pandora etc and yet she refuses to use an ad blocker so it’s a daily occurrence
Mid episode cliff hangers and reveals just don't hit the same when there isn't a 5 minute wait time between the end of a scene and the beginning of another.
Not to mention, they actually put effort into commercials, and some of them could be quite clever (Old Spice, anyone?). They didn't just spam you with the same insipid, low-effort slop five times in a row.
Years ago I got flamed for suggesting that streaming services do a bit of work to better place commercial breaks, mostly so they could be used as intermissions. But that was before everyone had ads by default.
And I would simply either change the channel or go to the bathroom on those breaks. A commercial didn't play a mandatory 5-minute commercial as soon as I turned on the TV, unless it was just shit luck, anyway.
You can see this especially with shows from premium channels - HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, etc. - where ads were at best between airings.
It's a compromise to see them the same way before or after a whole episode of a show ends, but when it goes in the middle somewhere it does disrupt the flow.
I remember when A&E aired the Sopranos and advertised for it - While I never watched that version, I can only imagine how it flowed with commercials in mind (alongside the significant amount of editing they had to do to make it watchable).
What I miss about commercials was they were mini cliffhangers planned throughout an episode. It was great on first watch with friends or family. You got a minute to pee or get refreshment. And you got to talk about whatever crazy shit just went down without interrupting the show.
Man, I miss when YouTube was just everyday people make stream of consciousness videos and random content with their heart, instead of these mass produced sponsored videos filled to the brim with ad breaks
Commercialization has ruined the internet in general. It's great for the people with real talent and started up at just the right time to take advantage but now it's extremely hard to find niche communities for anything. Everything being funneled into ad-revenue spaces like Reddit and Facebook was the death knell of forums as a whole, and with it most smalltime creators and friend groups.
Capitalism destroys everything. Quarterly earnings must go up forever! No amount is ever enough. Perpetual growth. 20 billion in profit? It better fucking be 23 billion next quarter or you’re all getting fired!
That’s the thing, you eventually run out of ways to trim the fat and optimize things in ways that don’t hurt people and ruin the product. But if you stop…the board will just vote to replace you with someone that will continue the capitalist death march.
It was only like last year that reddit threw a fit when YouTube was pushing new youtubers with low view counts instead of mainly what people were subbed to.
Literally more content like you are talking about now than ever before and you still have all the old stuff.
Possible the worst and most cringe-inducing thing about YouTubers now is the meta nature of everything: YouTubers making videos about YouTubers and subscribers and video statistics, because they clearly have nothing compelling to talk about or show.
You see these kinds of video titles all the time...
"User X gets EXACTLY what he DESERVES (subscriber numbers are plummetting! 😂)
"Best moments of Users X and Y finding out karma is a B!TCH" 🙌⚖️
"User X SHOCKED to see what ABC has become. You won't believe what the comments say..."
These kinds of "creators" (and the people who reward such shitty content by watching and 'liking' said videos) are pitiful. Why create anything at all, when you can just milk dummies for ad revenue by talking about others who do?
Yes. On the one hand, I am glad people have found work in a world where that's hard. On the other hand, what happened to just doing it for fun? I think some still do, but they're harder to find because the algorithm obviously prioritizes the people doing it for money.
Commercials also used to cover a wide variety of goods and services. In the two to four minutes average commerical break there would be ads for food, games, toys, care, repair services, medications, local shops of all kinds, and more. The ads also used to be better quality and more memorable. Not every one was 'SuperBowl' quality but we got things like the Sears AC "I'll call now" line and the JG Wentworth opera bangers. Today's commercials are either super boring and yet somehow not factual, or they try to hard to get your attention but it just comes off as weird or uncanny sometimes. If much rather see an ad for a local service company that's straight and to the point like "Hi, I'm Mike from Mike's Plumbing. We do quality work at an affordable price. Call today for a free estimate on your plumbing repair needs." And it's just Mike talking directly to the camera. Instead we get annoying mascots, over the top CGI, and tons of claims about products but never any facts about them.
Now it seems like we get the same small handful of ads shoved in our faces for months on end and then it switches to another small handful of ads. None of the ads are for services I want or need. None of them are for products in even vaguely interested in purchasing.
The vast majority of the ads I see are for car insurance (I pay $150 a month for full coverage on a new car due to my long history with my current company) or Alcohol (I don't drink). I'm not gonna switch providers just because the stupid Liberty Biberty Himbo is shoved in my face constantly. I don't drink alcohol at all and only ever purchase wine or vodka as a gift when invited to someone else's home. I'm also strangely getting off brand Erectile Disfunction medications pushed on my a lot lately.
Companies are collecting massive amounts of data on us and in many cases they claim that they use the data to tailor our online experiences. If that's the case why am I seeing alcohol and ED ads? Why am I not seeing ads relevant to my interests? You'd think it would be in their interest to show me ads for products in actually likely to buy so that their advertising budget is spent effectively. I guess that's too much to ask.
But overall it's a ton of reasons why ads frustrate us so much in today's world compared to the world we grew up in.
And they were far more bearable back then. And weren't on repeat. Back then you could get the same insurance commercial if you stuck around for more than an hour on the same channel.
U also didnt get an ad just for pausing videos/movies too, and some services are pausing the ad if u mute and swap to another tab to wait till it is over.
This. Ads are so much more interruptive and borderline invasive now. If you’re watching a live stream of something, they ads just happen literally whenever. They make you miss stuff and it’s the worst when it’s a big moment. Commercials were planned around so big moments were not very likely happen in between the time a person said “we’ll be right back after the commercials” and when the show or event was actually back.
Commercials used to be creative ads selling real products from real companies.
Now it's AI generated robots trying to sell me tai chi walking or articulation training. Sigh.
Edited to add: These creative ads from real companies became cultural catch phrases. "Yo quiero Taco Bell!" "Back off, get your own sandwich!" "Weaddababyitsaboy." Never gonna happen with today's AI slop ads.
It's a roll-on topical kinda gel-like mixture that's supposed to relieve pain. There was also ACTIVE ON which I remember being marketed more toward athletes or just more active people in general. I guess you were supposed to use Head On for your headaches and Active On for everything else.
That’s a bit of selective memory. The cool ads existed, but they were interspersed with TONS of low budget crap from local car dealers and furniture stores and whatnot.
We accepted long ad breaks because TV was a live feed and there was no other option.
But like...even with the local car dealer ads, it was real humans trying to sell you a real Chevy Cavalier. Not some AI-generated ad trying to sell you a dropshipped Temu product or scammy online course.
Second, I’ve been curious about this for a while now but why the hell are ads so terrible now? Like it’s always some “influencer” talking about something that changed their life and it’s like a glow in the dark straw. People talking to camera in an overly exaggerated fashion always rubs me the wrong way. But they all lack any sense of creativity.
I used to work in advertising and basically, the medium is the message.
Say it's 1997. You are not getting up in the middle of Law & Order to go and buy a glow in the dark straw. Hell, if it's running during primetime it's probably not even possible to buy it right then. Hence, the ad had to work at the top of the sales funnel and be memorable and entertaining. Memorable enough that the next time you're at the mall, the straw stands out to you. Entertaining enough that when you see it, you'll feel good about it and buy.
Nowadays you totally can buy the straw at 2am without even getting up off your chair, so the straw guy is going to attack the bottom of the sales funnel. It'll be overstated benefits, a sense of urgency and/or scarcity, deceptive price anchoring, just all kinds of implicit and explicit pressure.
Back in 1997, there was also a kind of ad where you could buy at 2am: Infomercials. That's why online video ads overwhelmingly use the same techniques. Creativity is not required because the point of sale is really close.
Creativity is always at the top of the chopping block.
Tons of people, most, in exec and above are a combo of being terrible at their job, and being generally a terrible person.
This is and has been a problem. C suite sucks, treats everyone as replaceable, would casually fire many for a 1% profit boost. Its not a secret. Who goes to work hard and put their sweat and tears into it? No one. Ive met so many extremely talented people that get burnt out and decide to keep their head down and coast rather than extend themselves for the better of the company. Extending themselves is never met with equal compensation. Now the resentment, poor management and terrible culture that breeds is an albatross on the company. Then they act too stupid to fix it. They would rather spend ten years blowing monies to find a solution to paying the employees 15% more. Even if it would net them employee loyalty and even higher production…dumbasses, with enough money to stay fucking stupid.
Which is essentially marketing is now made up of nepo babies or people bad at their jobs because if you were the type to make these great ads you kinda are likely to go like why the fuck would I want to slave away for corporate ad firms when I can launch a side hustle and be rich by doing my own random brand of DTC or drop shipping plus products which leaves a very limited amount of folks in the industry, the mentoring of the industry also dispareared... Which means its a lot more hits and misses.
Also it used to be that ads were a legitimate pathway for becoming a movie director which broke because it was a pipeline that went ads > music videos > movies but because music changing and videos disappearing the ecosystem disappeared leaving a very fragmented space.
So essentially good ads are made by very few folks, ads also became less preferred as we moved to a kpi focused way to market which means a preference for stuff you can track such as meta ads.
I love marketing and ads and would have loved to work in that space but we are talking about a very bad paying industry like half of what i chose instead, so those who are good end up being the good nepo babies because if you can do it at scale you end up realizing it's a bad deal.
My wife had never seen TRL, so I found some old episodes from ~1999 on YouTube that had some old commercials. They were legitimately creative and entertaining.
I like to imagine that all pharmaceutical commercials take place in a shared universe separate from our own but eerily similar in a combination of Plato’s Cave and Us (2019; directed by Jordan Peele). There are also some elements of existential horror a la Edgar Allen Poe.
Not just the AI slops, the other commercials that try to emulate influencer marketing. I hate being constantly bombarded with cheaply produced commercials showing some random person in a car, close up on them stuffing their face with a smorgasbord of fast food with no music and no fanfare, saying simple phrases like “It’s soooooo good!” and “Literally. Best. Thing. Evah!”
Every company I've worked before the one I'm now in was a large enough one that it standardised and locked the PC configuration and you couldn't change it or install something without askng the IT department to do it for you, so the browser had no adblock. It was a terrible internet experience.
The company I'm now in is smaller and I'm admin on my own PC, which means the first thing I did was to install ublock, and it's so peaceful.
Seriously and not just the expected uninterrupted youtube aspect of it.
Websites load more smoothly and promptly, the ui and viewing is so much more usable without ads interspersed all over the place.
And while this is less of an issue nowadays, but when I first started using ad blockers ages ago the amount of Spyware and trackers that I would accumulate by browsing the web dropped like a rock.
I dont really watch streaming services, and have had ublock for years. It's so nice not to even be aware of the latest media slop outside of what I might see posted somewhere online.
I've rekindled my relationship with commercials after ditching all paid streaming and using free programs like Tubi. I actually don't mind them, i just mute them and scroll Reddit for a few minutes 🙂
My biggest complaint isn’t even the commercials. It’s that if I watch a movie, IT’S THE SAME 5 COMMERCIALS over & over & over.. by the end of the movie, I’d have the ad memorized if I didn’t mute them.
Ads aren’t creative anymore either, they’re just trying to figure out the most obnoxious thing they can do to get your attention while you play videos in the background while doing something else. It’s disgusting.
What bugs me about those, as opposed to watching movies on TV, is that the ads come up randomly in the middle of scenes or even sentences.
In TV, at least the programmers made sure ads would fit in appropriate places (at least on decent networks like Superstition)
No. I always hated ads.
When I moved out ~20 years ago I had an old TV I basically never used. Constant ads were the reason I stopped watching linear TV entirely.
I pirated movies and shows and used adblocker and I still do to this day.
Same, I'm reading several comments above yours trying to say they were more entertaining or engaging or that they enjoyed jingles getting stuck in their heads.
This subreddit convinced me nostalgia is a fucked up drug. Be careful.
This is my gripe. I'm not bothered by the presence of ads, but when I have music playing while doing something else, I don't want to have to stop what I'm doing to go to my tablet and hit the skip button every 2-3 minutes. Just play the ad and then resume my selected content! Don't continue playing ads until I specify that I want you to stop! This is the reason I rarely use YouTube anymore.
No need to be optimistic. Anything to do with Fry can simply be explained away by remembering he's an idiot. Generally good natured and kind, but dumb as a stump.
I was just saying today how commercials weren't so bad on live TV as streaming cause we couldn't pause anyway it was a nice chance to get your snacks or use the bathroom. Plus they used to build natural transitions into shows for the breaks, now they just cut in the middle of a scene
Not even just shows – it used to feel really special when a recent release movie got a primetime TV slot. They’d advertise it all week to build the anticipation, then when the time came around you could settle in for a solid 8:30pm to 10:30pm evening viewing experience including ad breaks. They’d also usually fade into a cool-looking movie title card for a few seconds right before each ad break. It felt weirdly like part of the whole movie experience.
The YouTube ones where they take you out of full screen are kinda uncalled for. And they play the same terrible ads over and over. And all the AI is another thing that is filling up YouTube and the ads.
Both the ads themselves have (some are over 10 minutes long if you don't skip them) plus the unskippable portion is up to 60 seconds sometimes on a smart TV.
Ads in 1987 if they were like today:
Instead of a 5 minute ad break in the middle of my tv show that has a neat designed arc to fit with the ad break you're hit with an ad interrupting the shows intro hook with the double volume "DO YOU HAVE GIGANTIC FUCKIN HEMORRHOIDS?! WE KNOW YOU DO CAUSE WE HEARD YOU SCREAMING ON THE TOILET, HERE'S SOME ASS CREAM" also you gotta play a game of Simon Says on the remote while it's screaming about your ass or else you're stuck with a 15 minute advert about Clarence who hated life until he creamed his ass every day. Then you gotta do that same shit right as the conclusion happens and another spot in-between with the inbetween one being 30 minutes so if you don't engage with this bullshit you're just stuck watching some other bullshit you never asked to watch.
Shit you not I've had multi hour long adverts that require skipping, tried to watch a vod that hit me with them every god damn 10 minutes about some bullshit.
Lad below sayin he hit the advert zen, I've hit the advert enrage mode man I got adblockers on fuckin everything they can eat my cream free hemorroid laden asshole if they want another femtosecond of my attention.
I hate Youtube ads, I could tolerate them if they weren't stupid ads and at sensible times like I can watch some videos and literally a minute into them I get an ad, sometimes 30 seconds plus sometimes minutes long so I have to manually skip, then literally a minute or two later another 30 seconds at least of ads.
I have had ads longer than the video I am watching.
Ads? The only thing I see is that neat little number in the top right corner of my browser that tells me how many ads and trackers have been blocked. I haven't watched an ad on a streaming website in probably more than a decade at this point.
You could map out a show back then. Usually split into about 2-3 commercials, the show runs at about 22 minutes, its all math.
Nowadays? Unless they are courteous enough to put the commercial markers or do the "Here's 2 minutes of commercials" to not interrupt you for an hour, its anyone's game.
And sometimes they egregiously happen right before an interesting segment is about to happen.
Absolutely not, there were 3 sometimes 4 ad breaks that total 8 minutes of ads. Episodes were held to a strict 22 minute standard. Idk why anyone thinks this when you can literally watch old broadcasts of networks.
A half hour episode is only actually like 22-24 minutes at most usually, so you're getting 6-8 minutes of ads regardless of whether it's in one break or two.
Just ditched all of my paid streaming services. This is what I like about the free ones that remain. They stack their ads like TV used to do, three and half to four minute spots every twenty minutes or so. It's perfect timing to get up, take a piss, grab a drink, or do dinner prep. As for YouTube. I'm watching a fifteen minute video recounting the trap that hunter gatherers found themselves in once they fully transitioned into agricultural societies, and they put in 9 ads all of whom I can skip after fifteen seconds.
A lot of TV shows were edited around commercial breaks and sometimes the commercial break could even enhance the drama in a meaningful way. You could pace your watch around that and the whole experience was fine.
Youtube and other streaming platforms tend to just throw ads wherever while modern editing also often feels less grounded in any particular structure. The ad break might slice right between an interesting moment in a way that just feels like someone walking in front of you at the theater basically
I feel this. I always attribute this to modern ads (on many streaming with YouTube being one of my least favorite) were planned around. Youtube and other services will just spam ads. You get an ad so frequently and it just happens whenever they want. It ruins what I'm watching when in the middle of a sentence or thought just ends because of an ad.
I remember a time where YouTube videos used to have creators trying to plan ad breaks in their videos and other devices gave you the "this ad is longer so we play them less frequently." We don't get that today and it drives me up a wall.
I think I'm upset because it went from not having any ads to having 2 ads shoved at me right as I click onto a video, a sponsor ad baked into the video by the creator, and another 2+ ads as you just watch the video.
They were also way better made. Some I would even consider short stories.
Commercial making in the 80s and 90s was an art form. We have literal YouTube channels that compile hours worth of these things and always get tons of views. Sure, it could be for the sake of nostalgia, but looking back, I also think they were less annoying and way better done.
NGL, I was waiting for ads to end back then in a somewhat similar way as I do for YouTube ads now. However, back then at least the ads were funny or had some charm to them. Nowadays, they're loud, intrusive and annoying. They're also shown more frequently.
There was a certain cadence built into the relationship between shows and commercials. I didn't really mind it up until around 2005 when commercials took up more and more space, overshadowing the experience. With streaming or YouTube, the commercials can come randomly and without a natural break point. Sometimes in the middle of a sentence or word. A few streamers do ok maintaining a good balance, but some are terrible.
Adverts used to be fun,creative and interesting. Now they are so boring and corporatised any fun or creativity by has just been sucked out of 95% of them.
Sometimes you can’t distinguish modern adverts from the spoof cyberpunk style advertisements in Robocop in terms of their tone and language they use.
What really sucks is how they updated the ads on YouTube where if you don’t skip them they’ll just keep playing or ones that are an hour long for some reason. I’ll watch YouTube while doing the dishes or showering sometimes so it’s pretty annoying
Youtube now has those permanent playing ads that wont let you see the video unless you find the skip button, taking advantage of those who set it down to listen afar. It’s truly designed to be kept in your hands and your eyes glued to it the entire time to avoid playing unending ads by accident.
i broke down and finally started paying for youtube premium.
Eta to everyone saying use an ad blocker, this is not to watch YouTube in my browser but on my actual tv. Not sure it'll work the same but appreciate the thought.
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