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> Not watching them involves waiting a few seconds for the skip ad button to appear.

You're hallucinating. Just read the sidethread comment from tpm:

> I have never seen an ad on Youtube, much less an unskippable one.

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> YouTube will have more like 1-2 minutes of skippable ads for a 20-30 minute show, plus an ad inside the show you can fast forward past.

You must be using different YouTube than the rest of us. Or you're trolling. Or you work for Google.

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> and many will likely just endure it

And many will change the channel and watch something else in the meantime. Youtube checks that you have clicked away and just waits for you, basically FORCING you to watch the ad. TV and radio don't do that, neither do magazines.

If Youtube was TV, in this analogy every channel has an ad as soon as you open it. Oh, and when you go back to a channel you switched from due to an ad, that very same ad is waiting for you to watch it dutifully.

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> I like it so much that I pay the utterly economically irrational Youtube Premium monthly fee just to skip ads.

I use uBlock Origin and haven't seen an ad on Youtube in years.

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> I've personally stopped watching several videos just because an ad started

If you don't like ads, keep doing this. YouTube will notice and it will affect their decision making.

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>And then YouTube is showing longer ads every day, with many in the 5 minute range.

Uhhh, can't you can press 'skip' after 5 seconds? I've never seen an unskippable YouTube ad longer than 30 seconds.

Although yes, they are upping amount of ads: a couple months ago they started doing two back to back pre-roll ads every once in a while.

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> I will tell my computer to blank the screen and mute the audio when an ad is playing.

Indeed, but you'll still have to wait for the ad to play. YouTube can definitively win this race if they decide so.

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> So YouTube is going to make it impossible to watch without ads.

There is an option.

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> Those of you defending youtube on this, have you actually tried watching anything on the site without ad blockers?

That's how I normally watch YouTube. It's fine? The ads are mostly skippable after a few seconds.

If I was more into YouTube I'd probably pay to remove ads, but I probably average 15min a day.

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> Are youtube ads really unskippable

No. I never see ads on Youtube on my own devices, and that barely requires any effort.

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> Use all of these and you'll never see another YouTube ad.

I mean yes, but the OP already paid for youtube subscription as they said. So they shouldn't have to do anything to never see an ad again.

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> Oh and now I get 2 ads every single video, its barely worth it ...

Do yourself a favor and get an ad blocker. YouTube is barely usable without one at this point.

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> Whenever I'm around someone else who puts on a free-tier version of YouTube its rather shocking how frequent and intrusive the commercial ads are.

Also, when I accidentally open a video in a private browsing window where I'm not logged in. DAMN IT WHY IS ALL THESE ADS.

Although, I have to say that the ads on YouTube were some of the most targeted of any site, and I would often sit through them.

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> You can bet I will do everything I can to not display ads.

There you go: https://www.youtube.com/premium

"YouTube and YouTube Music ad-free, offline, and in the background"

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> On a sidenote am I imagining things or do videos actually look a tiny bit better in YouTube?

I'm not [ADVERTISEMENT] sure, because my YouTube viewing [ADVERTISEMENT] experience nowadays is so [ADVERTISEMENT] [ADVERTISEMENT] frequently interrupted with ads that it [ADVERTISEMENT] breaks my focus. #pleaselikeandsubscribeandclickonthenotificationbell

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> Holy crap, YouTube ads are hot garbage

This probably depends on your country. Here in Finland they are almost nice.

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> Of course you also have the option to stop watching YouTube completely.

That's actually happened. At first I started watching it on my phone since I don't get ads there, but then it was too much work, so now I just watch it less. Honestly I'm not complaining...

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> Why? The ads aren't that bad.

Honestly, the ads are easily the worst part of youtube for me. I'm logged into my google account, everywhere, all the time. And yet they still appear to go out of their way to find the least relevant ads they can find. Adsense doesn't seem to suffer the same, so this disconnect has always puzzled me.

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>I'd insta-buy if i could just pay to skip any ads i actually would have watched.

Google actually had a system like that in the past, but it wasn't for Youtube, it was for other ads around the web. I used it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contributor

Disclosure: I work at Google, but not speaking authoritatively.

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>Then you're watching the wrong videos.

Re-read the sentence you're replying to. "99% of videos on youtube", not "99% of videos I watch".

>You can easily skip these, not sure what the issue is here.

You can also ad-block. The issue is that even paying for YouTube isn't enough to not see any ads on YouTube.

>Additionally, there has never been a greater investment made on storing and distributing video like the one Google made on YouTube.

YouTube merely provides the logistical support. It's not a production company. That is, it doesn't seek out talent to produce content for it. This is the difference the GP is highlighting.

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