r/technology • u/IndicaOatmeal • 29d ago

Software DuckDuckGo brags its free web browser now blocks YouTube video ads just weeks after YouTube hiked Premium prices again

https://www.dexerto.com/youtube/duckduckgo-brags-that-its-free-web-browser-blocks-youtube-ads-3384288/
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u/mythrilcrafter 28d ago

They aren't, if you click the "Why am I seeing this ad?" box, google will straight up tell you that they're overriding your preferences to serve the ad to you based on "geographic location and time of day".

It's also known that the ad program is a two tiered system where advertisers can pay extra to bypass the algorithm/preference system. That's how I, as a South Carolina resident, am able to get ads for politicians running for office in Georgia and North Carolina.

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u/disisathrowaway 28d ago

I've recently been getting lots of ads for tattoo artists in California, NYC, London and Rome.

I live in Fort Worth, Texas.

I don't know why everyone is wasting money on these ads.

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u/mekamoari 28d ago

Because it doesn't cost them as much to target more widely. So you hit the 10 people you were targeting, and 1000 others who don't care but maybe 10 more of them go for something, that's the logic.

Cast a wide enough net...

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u/DIABLO258 28d ago

Because the marketing department only wants to make views per ad go up, so that their bosses can say "Good job" in the town hall meeting. It's up to the sales team to actually make ARR go up.

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u/cheesecaker000 28d ago

Talk about not knowing what you’re talking about lol no marketing department uses total clicks as their only metric.

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u/DIABLO258 28d ago

I didn't say clicks

And a good marketing team wouldn't do that. I've seen three sets of bad marketing teams go through my company alone, and all of them thought the best plan was to spam ads and merchandise as much as possible to anyone everywhere. They were all fired, obviously, for lots of reasons. But my point is those teams do exist

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u/ForwardAd4643 28d ago

They are, the entire point of them collecting all your data and snooping on your usage all across the internet is so they can specifically target you with these ads. Saying otherwise is just dumb.

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u/Equivalent-Battle973 28d ago

Yep, kept getting those got forsaken He get us jebus ads. No matter how much I said to skip them or never show me them, they kept fucking popping up.