YouTube sensation, PewDiePie earned a staggering $7 million in 2014 according to figures from Expressen, and continues to attract large audiences every day. This unbelievable success story indicates that it’s possible to forge a full-time career on YouTube. However, PewPieDie is an extreme case and it’s incredibly difficult to receive large funds unless you have a huge subscriber base. Only recently, Google admitted YouTube wasn’t profitable and have decided to launch YouTube Red, a subscription based service designed to combat these financial problems.
When monetization occurs, videos are plastered with adverts which can vary dramatically in length. As you might expect, viewers feel quite frustrated having to deal with the advert onslaught and use Adblock to make a more instant form of content. PewDiePie decided to openly discuss the damaging effect of Adblock and said in a Tumblr post:
“Using Adblock doesn’t mean you’re clever and above the system.”
“YouTube Red exist largely as an effort to counter Adblock.”
“YouTube Red exist because using Adblock has actual consequences.”
“Personally, I’m ok with if you use AdBlock on my videos. Ads are annoying, I get it, I’m not here to complain about that,”
“But for smaller channels, this number can be devastating.”
According to the channel’s official statistics, 40% of PewDiePie’s viewership currently use Adblock. This is a figure which has dramatically increased in the last few years. Content creators are relying on donations, Patreon backers, and other funding to produce videos. However, the intrusive manner which some of these adverts are implemented in explains why people feel so inclined to block them. On another note, YouTube was originally setup as a form of community media, and some people believe the content should be free, and hobby-based.
I decided to ask a few of my followers on Twitter about Youtube Red, and the typical consensus is best summed up in this tweet:
https://twitter.com/EnvyxDub/status/660905530702045184
Adblock and its impact is a polarizing issue and continues to spark quite a lively debate. It’s not illegal, and within the open internet’s philosophy, but it is undoubtedly reducing the revenue streams of content creators. PewDiePie’s comments seem a little rash given the massive success of his channel and this move could create bad PR. Although, perhaps he feels with such a large audience, YouTube Red will become a viable alternative. That’s the main problem though, as only 0.01% of channels will be able to attain a loyal viewership prepared to pay the monthly fee. I can pretty much guarantee, the majority of these will be hugely popular channels, and not the smaller ones PewDiePie is apparently trying to protect.
Do you use Adblock? Do you disable it to support sites your know and trust? Let us know in the comments section below.
Essentially Adblock is double moral …. you wanna watch a certain persons channel and enjoy their content but you wont support them to make more of the content you love … its a double edged sword that can be their channels death
Or you could just click the Adblock button and add that users page to the allow list. It isn’t difficult.
The biggest problem is that is most cases now the ads are unskippable and usually not even remotely related to the content of the channel I’m watching, If I watching a video on a Gun Channel I get ads for Cars or soccer or some womans cosmetic prosuct or shampoo is one example.
At that point AdBlock goes on
You’re implying people don’t support content creators in other ways. Twich subscriptions, Patreon, Merchandise. Taking a stance against Youtube’s increasingly aggressive advertisement is not double morals – it is common sense.
He forgot a very important one: “Adblock exists because of how online advertising is done.”
If the idiots behind the marketing schemes wouldn’t have decided that their ad content is more important than the content of the site I am attempting to visit, Adblock would have much less purpose.
If they kept their ads unobtrusive, it wouldn’t have been a problem. Instead they decided to overlay the actual content of the site with their autoplaying multimedia presentations. They decided that increasing the load time of a page by a factor of 3 or more solely for their ads was okay.
If the ad networks did a better job of vetting what they are pushing onto devices they don’t own and were not such a common source of malware, the *NEED* for Adblock would not be as great.
I will disable Adblock for sites that are worth it. Their content needs to be top-notch. The ads must not interfere with their content in any way – no autoplaying audio or video, restricted to specific areas, does not expand or overlay site content, does not make a sub-10 second page sans ads to load in 30 seconds or more, etc. If I can easily ignore the ads, I will whitelist the site. If any of these items are violated, I’ll block you. Period.
well adblock became used more cuz more and more ads are used i mean when u get an add in the video before it starts then a ad as u are watching it then the web site has ads on it it is a bit much if sites didnt push 300 ads in your face most people wouldnt use adblock
I don’t use ad-block, I think its perfectly acceptable to watch a 30 second advert for 10-20 minutes of entertainment. (Not directly relating to PewDiePie) It’s a better deal than what TV offers you.