I didn't know people can block Youtube ads. That'll explain why ad revenue and views never correlate. Kind of a shame cos the revenue from Youtube supports a lot of creators.
but I get it. Most people want everything free with no inconvenience either. That's not a dig at any of you using this stuff, might lol into it myself! It's just getting harder to make the free for end user model work and other revenue streams need exploring!
The problem is that for the longest time, youtube was really just ad-free.
Then came adverts on the pages, which was fair enough, but those got so bad they plastered the entire page...
So people started blocking them more.
Then they started with adverts before, and sometimes after and during the videos...
And THAT pisses off so many people that eventually someone figured out a way to block it all.
If advertising didn't always start off small and then grew like some giant tumor to the point where there's more ads on a page than genuine material, half as many people would be running adblockers.
Some sites will come up with a rather annoying overlay that will tell users they can't use the site if they don't allow java/flash/if they block ads, but that is easily defeated as well by just blocking that element from loading altogether...
Which, again, just pisses off the users and makes them more determined to block the ads.
Another problem is that there's a LOT of malware-spreading ads out there, which only make people go 'ads are bad, mmmkay ?', and block the lot.
Also, for the sake of being informative, adblockers are but one way people free themselves from adverts.
Hosts file based blocking (basically nullrouting the advertising servers) is quickly becoming more popular, and one can't do anything about it, as the advertising servers simply never connect with the intended target.
Advertising sites can switch names and servers, but eventually they get listed again, and there goes their advertising revenue.
What it boils down to is this : advertising on the internet wasn't an intended feature at the start of things, and like the .com bubbles that have popped and will continue popping, it is NOT a sustainable business model.
It never was to begin with, and the sooner people start understanding that, the better.
This may seem a harsh truth, and i can already hear advertising guru's scoffing at me, telling me i'm wrong...
But i remember how, in the late 80's and early 90's, many BBS'es grew too big for their breeches, started with advertising and/or 'pay to play' and then quickly went the way of the dodo. Since then i've seen many websites fall to the same problem.