Regulation is only a policeman. It doesn’t innovate.

Competitive markets do innovate. I watch YouTube live instead of Twitch (many streamers double stream) precisely because the former has skippable ads.

I’m guessing you haven’t taken even one semester of the relevant economics. Isn’t it great to be an internet commenter?

I am fine with advertising becoming less valuable. I fully appreciate there is a lot of media I take for granted due to advertising. Yet, ever since I was a small child the goal of advertising was to influence consumer behavior more than selling products or brand identity, which is extremely toxic. Once consumer gullibility wears off the dollars poured into advertising always find a way into political lobbying and policy influence campaigns, which is really just more of the same.

Funny, I would say making advertising less valuable is big win.

One of those mythical "win win win" scenarios

Why would I an advertiser pay $1 to show an advert to someone that doesn’t have $1 to spend on my product.

If they do have a dollar to spend then why wouldn’t they spend it on what they wanted to watch in the first place rather than spend it with me, the advertiser.

I would argue that limiting the amount of unrequested product evangelism shoved into users' eyeballs is a valuable public and mental health initiative. I wish we could have seen the alternate reality where ad-revenue was not the most lucrative business model for the internet.

I don't see how less video time for people would harm innovation.

If you, like me and most people I know, hate ads, why would it be a bad thing to limit it?

What are we expecting to actually accomplish with all this platform growth thing?

If your revenue comes from parasitical strategies it's negative sum and the economy is better off without it.

> Many advertisers may avoid advertising or lower their ad budgets. This means the tech platform makes less revenue. This means the platform and the video creator both make less revenue. This means less videos get created.

this all sounds great. ideal, even.

Too many people think removing ads means they'll still continue to get content for free, they just won't have to watch ads.

At best, it's as you said, the platform and creator make less money (Youtube gives 55% of ad revenue to the creator). This would naturally lead to less content eventually.

At worst, video content becomes unsustainable without a subscription.

>Many advertisers may avoid advertising or lower their ad budgets.

Great. Once that happens, we can work on regulation to kill even more advertising.

> market distortionary

I am unsure what you are trying to say here. But if you mean to refer to "market distortion", I cannot see how that can be happening.

The reason is that these rules are supposed to be applicable universally to every company in the same way. And as such, they do not create any market distortion in one way or the other. Because everyone has to play by the same rules. Those are as fair market conditions as one can get, in my opinion.

> some might not bother

Why should that be a problem? If someone does not like the regulation in a particular jurisdiction, it is fine. No one is forcing them to operate there.

The main point is the following: If they want to operate, they have to play by the local rules. Just like everyone else.

Ad skipping should be handled at the platform level and not left to individual advertisers to control. Regulations like this make such an outcome more likely.

Mobile ads in the US are heinous. Each one has a different mechanism for skipping, the skip buttons are micro sized and impossible to tap, some of them don't even work.

Standardization should have been up to the platforms selling ads, but they haven't done it. It's past time for local authorities to step in and protect consumers from predatory behavior.

Markets are not a natural phenomenon and are themselves the result of complex social arrangements, involving coercion. So, the market is the result of "distortions" before and after various regulatory measures.

Good?

> market distortionary

So what if it is?

> makes global advertisers have to customize for the local audience

My understanding of advertising is that there is already substantial customization for local audiences.

Isn’t that presumably the point of the Vietnamese government whenever they set new requirements?

To make it harder for people who dont care about Vietnam to do business.

I would assume that the global advertisers are already having to customize for the local audience since the spoken language is Vietnamese.

Can you spell out more what’s wrong with distorting a market or customizing for local audiences?

why is it a bad thing if global advertisers have to customize? If they're global, they should have the resources. Anyhow none of our concerns

Simply put, fuck the "market" (aka: uber-rich people). The market should serve us humans, not the other way around.

Ive heard this garbage excuse since Reagan took a wrecking ball to regulations. Not making effective regulations is ALSO a market distorting thing, that encourages the absolute worst behaviors. And now with Citizens United, its $1 = 1 vote.

But no, "marrrrrkeeeeetttttt"

I personally like descriptive regulation over prescriptive regulation.

Instead of prescribing exactly what you should do, describe the outcomes you want, and let case law fill in the rest of the owl. That's the only way to prevent violations like this.

To be fair, the main disadvantage of this approach is that law is much harder to understand. You can't just read the law as it is written, you also have to familiarize yourself with all the rulings that tell you how that law should actually be interpreted.

I don't know why you feel it is irrational at all. That a perfectly rational reason to be angry about the state of ad injection

> and needing some approval.

and here shows just how bad the rot is. I would assume that buying that much "air time" to have your longer content played would come a quite a premium. I would also not be surprised if selling those premiums come with a bonus. There's a reason those paid-programming shows run with no commercials. The cost of airing it paid for all of the ad pods during that block of air time, plus extra for being special snowflake.

If these long content "ads" are flukes, then that also shows the rot of the ad market that this isn't handled as an exception.

I see them as conflicting viewpoints because as a general rule companies do not focus on

> Long term financial interests, mostly.

It's great that you as an individual feel otherwise (I do too), but there are larger macro forces at work which compel firms to act the way they do: pursue short term growth at all costs. The counter-balance to this is either a strong regulatory environment, or a hope and prayer that a majority of companies suddenly gain a strong CEO who feels otherwise and is not obligated to satisfy shareholders who don't. Only a few such CEOs come to mind, and they're looking increasingly short for this world.

I think I was speaking equally to anyone else reading the thread, but also I should have pointed out that the longer you watch an ad, the more familiar you will become with accepting and expecting the product being sold. There's no way to get around the time spent. Just because the first 5 seconds have the largest proportional impact, doesn't mean the last 25s won't also have an impact.

But even if everything I said was incorrect, and you actually are immune, just like you describe... everyone else isn't, and they're being targeted as much as you are.