YouTube's 30 second unskippable ads

I came across some articles about YouTube’s plan of getting rid of 30 second advertisements that were unskippable in 2018. YouTube can reach a very wide audience with some of the most popular videos getting hundreds of millions of views. Each and every one of their users have to deal with the design of their site and the ads. Video Ads – The bane of the consumers but necessary for the producers of the content, be it ones who produce television shows or videos or any sort of content on the internet. (I’m going to ignore the discussion of ad blocking software and whatnot because that’s a whole other can of worms)

But that’s huge right? Since we’re talking about YouTube here, if I had a choice of ads on their site, I’d rather pick the skippable after 5 seconds deal instead of waiting a forced 30 seconds before viewing the content I expected from the video. As a user, when I do see those unskippable ads I would often groan, which probably isn’t good for the user experience side. And judging from Google’s own page for YouTube’s “Non-skippable in-stream ads” it even says that the abandonment rate, basically the amount of people that don’t watch an ad from start to finish, is higher for these types of ads specifically.

These days people enjoy much more bite-sized content that they can complete in a rather short amount of time. Think of gifs nowadays, these are short videos that people enjoy (Often much shorter than 30 seconds). Imagine having to sit through a mandatory ad that is the length of multiple gifs before you finally get to what you want; I would at the very least try to avoid this as much as possible...

(What was that? A distraction! and it was just chosen because it was on the front page of /r/gifs). If I wasn't talking about gifs this wouldn't even have been relevant, and even barely so. That gif itself was a huge break in the text, a large distraction don't you think?

(P.S. I apologize for the gif as it is very distracting but it is a good example.)

Now from a design perspective for the user, I would have preferred if I was given the option to view it, "i am lion." gif, like so instead of having it pop up in the middle of the text since viewing it doesn't necessarily enhance the text surrounding it.

If you think about it, this choice does make sense. People, as users, enjoy a feeling of control. They want to be valued, not seen as just consumers. They want to feel like they are given options and can then choose the most preferable one. In addition to this is the prevalence of users using their mobile devices as, more often than not, you can’t even talk to your friend on Skype or browse Twitter while you wait for that ad to finish playing. They are limited on both time and have much more restricted mobile bandwidth on the go. 

I mean sure the ads can be annoying but they are businesses and they have to make money in order to keep operating. And even though the other <30 second unskippable ads remain I think this is a step in the right direction. With all the various forms of media nowadays available and competing for consumption, YouTube should be constantly changing in order to best fit the needs of their user base. So what is the answer? Well if I knew I'm sure I would have a bunch of people from the advertising industry on my doorstep. But, in my opinion, a good change would be having "acceptable" ads. Ads that aren't intrusive (Large popups that fill up the entire screen anyone?) and aren't embedded into the content (Like the gif above which is constantly restarting which I'm sure was very distracting.) would be a great start.

But this removal will give control back to the user faster and should leave the users at least slightly happier (or less annoyed perhaps) while watching videos.

Bibliography

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/188038?hl=en

http://www.thedrum.com/news/2017/02/17/google-ditches-30-second-unskippable-ads-youtube

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/03/12/humans-have-shorter-attention-span-than-goldfish-thanks-to-smart/

Bless FrankerFaceZ! PraiseIt

I had meant to write this earlier (Because I had taken these screenshots when AGDQ, a speedrunning marathon that happens every year that raises money for different charities, was running in early January I believe) so the images themselves may be a bit old.

Anyway I frequent a streaming website called Twitch.tv where you can watch others play games and such. I almost always have a stream open on a second monitor akin to leaving the television on as background noise.

Now here is what the stream on Twitch looks like without any modifications.

Original view of Twitch.tv

Sure it looks fine. But I wouldn't be writing about this if I didn't notice something unusual. Here's what I see:

View with BetterTTV and FrankerFaceZ extension installed*

Ignoring the obvious dark theme and some changes that were also made from BetterTTV extension as well as changes the FrankerFaceZ extension/addons for browsers (And the double "Host" buttons at the very bottom since both extensions added one I hadn't removed one of the buttons until a week later).

There were two extra buttons that simply are not there on other channels, even with the addons.

The "Featured" and "Schedule" button that came specifically for this channel using FrankerFaceZ were completely new to me!

 Note: It usually isn't there and is purely added on from the community extension*.

It's an extra feature that GamesDoneQuick had to update specifically for the stream through interaction with the extension developer and sadly I can't find the link to the extension page that mentioned this feature because the buttons are gone now that the marathon is over...But it was there, I swear!

And boy were they so, so, so useful.

Normally you would have to scroll down, click on a banner to open a new tab in order to go to their website to see the schedule. This embeds it right underneath for ease of access for the user and is so much more convenient.

As you can see, hovering over the button with the mouse will give you the current game being run as well as the next game to be played.

Clicking on the button will give you the whole schedule without ever having to leave the page.






Next the Featured button. I'm glad this was added because in the past GDQ (Games Done Quick) charity marathons I've personally been too lazy to manually type in the stream of the person that was currently playing in order to follow them for notifications on when they stream themselves. As a result I would just forget about them a week later even though I thought what they did was really cool.

View after clicking on the Featured button.*

A button to directly follow the streamer!
Honestly I thought that was fantastic and so helpful I wondered why Twitch didn't create a feature similar to this where ANY streamer can update these on their own channels, for example, to promote their friends and people they are currently playing with.

Anyway really great designs added with the help of third party extensions. I personally don't see any downsides to Twitch actually implementing this themselves as it barely adds any clutter to a place where Twitch already puts their 'Share' button (See bottom of first screenshot next to viewer count.)

*All of the images above are screenshots I took of Twitch.tv and Twitch.tv/gamesdonequick
 and the layout of the site has been modified and does not reflect the original layout of the site.