I did not hate YouTube ads. They were never my favorite part of the YouTube experience, but for most of my life of using YouTube, I've dealt with the endless cycle of pre-roll ads every time I wanted to see the latest preview or movie clip on YouTube. I understood the basic idea: hosting videos are not cheap, and ads help pay for continuous service and even support my favorite content creators.
Then, a few months ago, YouTube Red offered a free trial version of three months, magically transporting me to a world where suddenly, there were no ads on YouTube. But my test ended a few weeks ago, and now I'm in hell.
Dealing with ads on YouTube had become so automatic part of the process of watching a video, it was practically muscle memory. Click on the link, close the brain, pass the mouse automatically to the "jump" button, wait a few seconds and enjoy the video. To switch to Red for the first time, it was almost a jarring experience: to wait constantly for the other shoe to fall and for a dreaded unstoppable ad to appear, but they never did.
"Would not it be nice if it was always like this?", I began to wonder. "Why even have ads? What if all the internet were like that?"
And then, my free trial ended and the harsh reality of the ads came crashing down. Part of this is probably just the abrupt nature of the change. I'm noticing more ads because I've spent weeks getting used to the world without them, and now, instead of the instant gratification of clicking or playing a video and watching it play, I've been forced to relearn patience. (If I was prone to conspiracies, I think YouTube was showing me more ads than before to try to go back to YouTube Red's monthly payments, but I do not think there's really any empirical evidence to support that.) [19659007] Although I hate YouTube ads, I do not think I'm going to pay $ 10 per month for YouTube Red
Something else about YouTube ads that bothers me now – they're so repetitive. I'm sure Google and YouTube are tracking every minute of every video I've seen and collecting that information with the rest of my web browsing history. Surely they will realize that I have seen (and skipped) the same announcement of a strange Marvel toy in which I have no interest and that it would be better if they served me something else. Because the only thing more irritating than an annoying ad is to follow it in all the videos that I watch.
But here's the thing. Even though I hate YouTube ads, I do not think I'm going to pay $ 10 per month for YouTube Red. Personally, I'd rather spend my hard-earned money on a subscription that provides me with the content I want but still do not have access to ( as for example, Apple Music, Spotify, Netflix, Hulu or Moviepass, all of which are in the same financial stadium) instead of just making the content already free is a little more pleasant to look at (and before asking, no, YouTube Red's original content does not justify the cost).
And besides, a few weeks have already passed. Soon, I will return to just notice them again.
