How YouTube’s War on Ad Blockers Affects Its Business

Published: August 30, 2024

How YouTube’s War on Ad Blockers Affects Its Business
By Movieguide® Contributor
YouTube declared war on ad blockers to cut out their impact on its bottom line, but the battle has proven harder than expected, and the video platform hasn’t clawed back all the profit that it hoped.
Ad blockers are programs that block ads from appearing on users’ devices. They have become more and more popular as advertising across the internet has become increasingly in your face. YouTube is one such of these websites, having slowly introduced more and more ads throughout the years.
The inclusion of these ads, however, is paramount to YouTube’s operation as it is mainly funded by advertiser dollars. Thus, the rise of ad blockers posed a major threat the YouTube’s future as a business as they endangered the platform’s bottom line.
YouTube has had multiple phases in its war against ad blockers, but the problem remains prevalent on the site. The first strategy was to identify users who had an ad blocker on and ask them to turn it off. Unsurprisingly, this method had little effect because it imposed no penalty on those who ignored the prompt.
The next step was much more aggressive, causing videos not to load for users using ad block. Finally, YouTube has made using an ad blocker against its terms of service, placing repeat offenders in jeopardy of having their accounts blocked and deleted.
While many ad block users might use the program knowing it hurts YouTube’s bottom line — and are okay with that —they may not realize it also impacts the revenue that the content creators receive as well. Because content creators receive a portion of YouTube’s ad revenue, if YouTube isn’t making money from ads, then creators aren’t either.
This, however, has led to content creators looking for alternative sources of income — typically direct monetary support from their dedicated viewers — causing them to become less reliant on their portion of ad revenue from YouTube.
YouTube’s heavy-handed approach towards ad blockers has, however, caused many people to leave the site altogether, opting to receive entertainment from other sources where they are not going to be bombarded with marketing.
Nonetheless, YouTube remains extremely popular and serves as the premiere destination for advertisers thanks to its industry-leading targeting. In fact, the ads shown on its site are at least more than two times more effective than anywhere else.
Movieguide® previously reported:
A new study revealed that ads delivered on YouTube provide more than double the recall among consumers than on any other platform.
The study found that YouTube provides 2.3 times better ad recall compared to broadcast and cable and 2.6 times greater ad recall than video-on-demand (VOD), per Indiewire. The staying power of ads was particularly strong among children ages 2-12 with over half of them (53%) saying they recall ads they see on YouTube more than anywhere else.
The staying power of YouTube’s ads boils down to a couple of key factors. The factor with the most impact is that Google’s ad targeting is some of the best currently available, meaning users are almost always being sold a product that is relevant to them.
Another key factor is the fact that YouTube’s ads are nearly always skippable within 5 to 15 seconds, meaning users don’t often walk away while ads are rolling. Cable and VOD ads, meanwhile, often come in chunks of multiple minutes, which lead to consumers checking out, or walking away from their TV/device while the ads roll.
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