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Writer's pictureShe's SINGLE Magazine
Oct 144 min read

Are Ads on YouTube Getting Worse?

by Venus Sanders

 

As of September 2024, YouTube remains one of the most popular websites alongside Facebook and Wikipedia, but that may soon change as users report an increase in ads on the platform. As an avid consumer, I, too, have started seeking content elsewhere when it became nearly unbearable to get through a twenty-minute video without five ad interruptions!


Sure, streaming platforms like Tubi, Netflix, or even Peacock have ad-supported content, but it’s nowhere near as overwhelming. A twenty-minute cartoon episode on Tubi might have one ad break consisting of two fifteen-second ads at most, whereas on YouTube, there are several breaks. While YouTube gives you the illusion of being able to skip ads after five seconds, that’s not always the case. You may skip one ad only to be forwarded to another that you cannot skip.


Not only that, but YouTube allows ads of any length, so if you walk away from your television or phone, you could easily be shown a commercial disguised as an ad that runs for nearly fifteen minutes! These long-form ads are most popular on kids' content because, let’s face it, most kids aren’t skipping ads—they’re being conditioned to sit through them as part of the experience to access their desired content. However, this can have drawbacks, as users may either opt out of using the platform entirely, resulting in lower revenue for creators, or consider paying for YouTube Premium, which doesn’t support creators, only the platform itself.


The reality is that places like YouTube and Google are nothing without their contributors, so why treat them poorly? In August of this year, Google rolled out an update that essentially deindexed a large number of quality websites in favor of AI-generated responses, Reddit (forum) content, and merchants. Has Google become the next QVC? Who is their competition if not Yahoo and Bing? TikTok?


Surely that could be it, considering TikTok has positioned itself as a search engine, incorporating both SEO content and search results into their app. Many websites were completely taken aback by this latest update, and after searching for answers, discovered that many of the websites still indexed were part of link-building farms that pay to receive backlinks from other websites with a high DA score. Google used to be a quality search engine, but now it's slowly running itself into the ground, punishing its contributors—bloggers, journalists, and content creators are feeling the impact.


It’s become apparent that Google and YouTube no longer want to support SEO-related content strategies and are more in favor of social media creators who can drive traffic to their channels using other platforms such as TikTok, Facebook, and even Instagram in some cases. These social media platforms are essentially working together—allowing users to add links to their other platforms on each of their social media pages. While this may seem innocent enough, it’s changing the way we consume content.


Whether it’s the oversaturation of TikTok videos covering the Diddy trial or the multitude of podcasts that almost everyone seems to think they should have, it’s all a bit too much. The average consumer has to work an 8-hour shift, cook, clean, and maintain themselves, all while trying to decide which platform they want to spend their time on—whether to consume or create content, it’s all overwhelming. As one TikTok user shared, “We’re all too young to be experiencing this level of burnout!”


Everywhere we go, at every turn, there are ads to consume, sometimes even without our consent, as content creators don’t have control over how many ads are shown to their viewers. For example, websites such as Vogue, the New York Post, and Media Takeout are bombarded with ads, making the user experience unpleasant. More ads mean more loading time, which leads to slower mobile performance. This results in higher bounce rates and users clicking off to visit other websites with fewer ads and easier-to-consume content. Here at She’s Single, we’ve had to turn off certain anchor ads that were never approved in the first place so that users can have a pleasant viewing experience when visiting our website.


If users are clicking on and off too quickly due to an increase in ads, Google can label that website as useless and deindex their content, only to prop up other sites with less useful content. Is there a plan to all of this? Well, sure there is—capitalism at its finest. Google will now only rank the websites that pay them for ‘sponsored’ posts, despite users already having to pay for YouTube Premium, Google ads to run on websites, and even ads on YouTube itself. The user experience has taken a backseat in every way possible, and now, with the rise of in-feed ads on TikTok, users are starting to see a trend.


But where do we go from here if every corner has ads? The best thing to do is start supporting more independently owned companies like this one. Corporations are going to do their best to squeeze every single dollar from consumers, but you can be the change you want to see by simply stopping your support or subscriptions to platforms that don’t put you, the reader and user, first.


At the end of the day, subscriptions and ads are getting out of control. The machine wants you to believe that in order to consume any form of entertainment, it must cost an arm and a leg—and if you’re not paying with your wallet, then you must pay with your eyeballs, and that’s simply not fair. We have the power to make or break these corporations, and to break them, we must show them that user experience is the priority. Support the websites that put you first.

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