{"id":9408,"date":"2020-08-21T20:58:06","date_gmt":"2020-08-21T19:58:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/?p=9408"},"modified":"2020-08-21T20:58:07","modified_gmt":"2020-08-21T19:58:07","slug":"youtube-ads-are-not-smart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/2020\/08\/youtube-ads-are-not-smart\/","title":{"rendered":"YouTube Ads Are Not Smart"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Like many people, I watch a fair bit of YouTube. A surprisingly large amount I watch via an app on my TV, but I also watch all kinds of how-to tutorials on my PC. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And with YouTube videos come ads. I&#8217;m a YouTube Music subscriber (previously Google Play Music) so it&#8217;d only be another \u00a32 a month to get the ad-free offer. But for now, I&#8217;m putting up with them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now a couple of things you should know about me &#8211; indeed, if you follow me on this site or on social media, you&#8217;ll know these things already.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>I like cycling<\/li><li>I make videos<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When I watch a cycling video on YouTube, there&#8217;s a fair to middling chance it&#8217;ll be preceded by a <a href=\"https:\/\/zwift.com\/uk\">Zwift<\/a> advert.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And when I watch a how-to video on doing something in Premiere Pro or After Effects, I&#8217;ll get an Adobe advert.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The actual ad creative changes from time to time. Sometimes I get an Adobe Creative Cloud ad; other times it&#8217;ll be about Premiere Rush, Adobe&#8217;s mobile video editing app. And Zwift has a roster of cycling stars on their books to rotate between.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But often, I&#8217;ll get one of those ads on some other random YouTube video I&#8217;m watching.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But here&#8217;s the thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;m a <em>paid<\/em> Zwift subscriber already.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;m also a <em>fully paid<\/em> Adobe Creative Cloud subscriber.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I can&#8217;t stop seeing ads for things that <em>I&#8217;m already paying for!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">YouTube doesn&#8217;t know I&#8217;m not a subscriber, and there&#8217;s no real way to tell it. All you can do is mark an ad as somehow unsuitable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now you might think that logically, if I&#8217;m watching dozens of Adobe Creative Cloud themed videos, either I&#8217;m <em>very<\/em> on the fence about biting the bullet and paying for it, or <em>I&#8217;m a paid subscriber who&#8217;s using the products and is looking for tutorials on doing clever things with the software<\/em>. The latter is far more likely!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In the meantime, I&#8217;m just going to carry on seeing algorithmically accurate, yet utterly pointless digital ads.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Like many people, I watch a fair bit of YouTube. A surprisingly large amount I watch via an app on my TV, but I also watch all kinds of how-to tutorials on my PC. And with YouTube videos come ads. I&#8217;m a YouTube Music subscriber (previously Google Play Music) so it&#8217;d only be another \u00a32 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9409,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[454,635,136],"class_list":["post-9408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-media","tag-advertising","tag-digital-advertising","tag-youtube"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9408"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9410,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9408\/revisions\/9410"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}