Ad blocking

YouTube began waging war against ad blockers last year in an attempt to force users to either sign up for a YouTube Premium subscription or actually watch the ads they were being served. Most popular ad blockers have since been updated to bypass the crackdown, but YouTube is refusing to back down from the persistent ad blockers.On Saturday, a trending post on Reddit showed a YouTube video starting to buffer whenever a user enabled the AdBlock extension. Hundreds of Redditors chimed in with similar complaints,…

YouTube could be about to launch a widespread crackdown on folks using ad blockers. Reports emerged last month that YouTube was deploying pop-ups to warn against the use of ad-blocking tools. But now it’s taking the action one step further. A revised notice says that an ad blocker has been detected, but now warns that the video player will stop functioning after three video streams unless the user adjusts the ad blocker’s settings to allow YouTube ads, or disables the ad blocker entirely. Alternatively, YouTube…

YouTube continues to push Premium even as the family plans have recently become more expensive.Image: PixieMeGoogle is trying out a new show of force to keep users from watching YouTube videos without ads. Some users are reporting that the company will allowaccess to just three videos before prompting to either disable ad blockers or otherwise pay Google for the privilege of ad-less viewing.Google’s Antitrust Case Is the Best Thing That Ever Happened to AIAs first spotted by BleepingComputer, a Reddit user posted a…

Image: A. Aleksandravicius (Shutterstock)YouTube is getting a little bit of an advertising shakeup. The company announced at the YouTube Brandcast event yesterday that it would be adding unskippable 30-second ads to the YouTube platform as viewed on televisions.Google’s Antitrust Case Is the Best Thing That Ever Happened to AIAs Variety reports, the 30-second ads will run on the top 5% of its most-viewed and most-engaged videos on the platform when played on a television. YouTube will also begin testing out “Pause…

Illustration: Artem Mashchenko (Shutterstock)YouTube is cracking down on users determined to evade its ads and has given some of them an ultimatum: Turn off your ad blocker or subscribe to YouTube Premium. Ad-blocking users who don’t opt for either of those options won’t be able to watch videos on YouTube at all.Why Banning TikTok Won’t Protect Our PrivacyThe measure is part of a limited global test being carried out by the company to ensure advertisers continue to get the most views for their money, Bleeping Computer…

There’s a hell of a lot of groups violating Google’s ad policies these days. On Tuesday, Google said it stopped 5.2 billion “bad ads” in 2022, 1.8 billion more than 2021. At the top of the list are potentially malicious ads, and that number has grown tremendously over the years, according to the data. Google’s Antitrust Case Is the Best Thing That Ever Happened to AIThe company lists the top bad ad as those that abuse its ad network, a catchall term for ads that contain malware as well as manipulative or spam ads. Google…

I want to believe.Photo: Dzelat (Shutterstock)The Federal Bureau of Investigation took a break from hunting serial killers this week to post a public service announcement: if you’re not using an ad blocker, what are you doing?According to the Internet Crime Complaint Center, criminals are using ads in search engine results like Google and Bing to impersonate brands. These ads send unsuspecting users off to phony websites that look identical to the pages people are actually searching for, where they are then be subjected…

Screenshot: AmazonOne of the big recent developments in the advertising industry are what’s called “retail ad networks.” Governments and tech platforms like Apple and Google are cracking down on data gathering, making third-party data a bit harder to get. That creates a business opportunity for big retailers and other companies that have large databases of information about their existing customers. Just about every major consumer-facing company you can think of has launched an advertising network over the last few years.…

Apple’s reportedly planning to introduce some sort of ad platform on its TV+ streaming service, though it’s not fully clear what the end result could look like.Photo: DANIEL CONSTANTE (Shutterstock)Like practically every other streaming network out there, Apple can’t seem to stay away from taking a big bite of the advertising pie that’s lingered uneaten since the dawn of TV streaming services.As first reported by Digiday based on multiple anonymous media agency executives, Apple’s looking at new ways to monetize its…