YouTube has gotten progressively worse with its ads over time, though. They're slowly turning up the heat to eventually boil the frog. Without opposition, YouTube ads will eventually be as bad as TV ads have become.
On that note, I haven't watched network TV in over a decade because to the ads. None of the content on offer on cable and satellite TV is worth the asking price of both a subscription fees and ads, especially when most of it can be found in other legitimate sources, usually in higher quality.
> YouTube ads will eventually be as bad as TV ads have become.
There's no evidence of that though. Users will easily close a tab because the preroll ad is too long, because there are plenty of other immediate things on the internet. In a way that TV viewers had no choice, because the other channels are just as bad.
Yes, YouTube ads have been getting a little longer from their previous almost-nothing. But YouTube has also been extremely conservative in that direction, as they know they're walking a fine line. The idea that ads will get as bad as broadcast TV seems exceedingly unlikely.
I have YouTube premium but sometimes I can't login to my Google account and have to use plain, ad-infested version of YouTube and it's really unusable.
I swear that listening to a 3 minutes content I am played at least 6 ads of at least 20 non-skippable seconds and in volleys of 2 or sometimes even 3 ads one after another.
It's not "getting terrible", they're already way past that.
I've watched YouTube for years and years and I've never in my life encountered more than 2 ads in a row. I've never encountered an unskippable ad longer than 15 seconds, and every ad that is skippable is skippable after just 5 seconds. And while ads are often included at the start, once they've played I've never seen ads get inserted before the 3-minute mark -- they're usually around minute 4 or 5.
(It's true that after a 3-minute video finishes playing they've started playing another set of ads, but you can just hit pause and navigate to your next video. You never need to watch them.)
I've never encountered anything even remotely close to 2 minutes of ads to watch 3 minutes of content as you're describing. It's usually 10 or 15 seconds total. But I'm in the US, maybe there are countries where it's different?
I'm particularly curious if there are objective stats around this. It's crazy to me that our experiences could be so completely opposite.
On that note, I haven't watched network TV in over a decade because to the ads. None of the content on offer on cable and satellite TV is worth the asking price of both a subscription fees and ads, especially when most of it can be found in other legitimate sources, usually in higher quality.