Suddenly getting lots of adverts in Youtube

[Andrew]

I have a Sony smart TV, circa 2017 build and have been watching YouTube videos for some time.

This morning the home page was predominantly nonsense stuff intended for kids and the search facility was missing all the stuff I have previously looked for.

I managed to get it back as it was by 'logging in' again but now every video is preceded by those annoying short ads that you get by watching Youtube on a Windows PC. They also pop up mid way through a video. I had been watching YouTube videos for about a year on this TV and have never seen an advert before. I wonder what has changed ?.

Andrew

[mm0fmf]

Yes, Google are fed up with people using ad-blockers on their browsers and are trialling enforced ads. But not on everyone and not all the time.

[Joe]

It's mostly a waste of advertising money anyway. P&G famously stopped Internet advertising and saw no change in sales. Less famous businesses have found the same.

I don't see adverts, even when they make it onto my screen. I've never bought products advertised to me, since I realised that it was only the poorer products which were advertised, higher quality products don't need it.

When it was still legal to advertise alcohol in the UK, it was mostly the basic grades of beer which I saw. Greene King advertised their IPA but not Abbot, which sold pretty well anyway. Courage advertised John Courage but not Directors'. And so on. And all the advertised products, and other products from the same manufacturer were that bit more expensive, due to what at the time were obscenely high prices for TV advertising.

What's really irritating is the habit of a few online businesses of sending four or five emails a week full of junk to someone who has bought one item from them. I have a supply of self-expiring email addresses to use if I suspect a business of being this kind, but I'm not always right.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Youtube wants you to watch ads. Frankly plug a laptop into the telly and run Ublock origin on it, and watch you tube on that. I never see any of those ads.

[John J]

As soon as an ad pops up my whole attention is devoted to watching the countdown to skip this advert timer. I've no idea what the ads contain. Some ads don't offer the skip option so I resolve never to knowingly purchase whatever they're trying to flog.

[Brian Gaff]

Probably updated the firmware. After all Some runs on Android and Android like Youtube is owned by Google. You either pay them a sub or put up with it. I was going to reply with. Shh or everyone will want the ads. What worries me about them is that any old crackpot selling snake oil seems to be able to advertise anything. Brian

[alan_m]

Being internationally based the adverts don't have to be UK legal or honest. However, the worst platform for scam adverts seems to be Facebook.

[Andrew]

I keep getting ads for Tesco though and I don't have a clubcard or (active) Nectar card.

I think the TV has been updated because now when I click on YouTube a red progress banner appears for a couple of seconds and is followed by a 'chirrup'. This never happened before.

Andrew