Why do Youtube ads all Look Like Scams?
How the algorithm shows us exactly what we want: the good, the bad and the ugly
Post-pandemic, I couldn’t get out of bed at the idea of going back to the office. The soulless cubicle, the obligatory conversations about sports by the coffee machine, and the realization that my presence was solely for a paycheck left me yearning for an alternative.
Every day I searched the internet for a possible alternative to my tie at the office. Then, I noticed how many times I sat through 60-second ads before my favorite videos on Youtube, intrigued enough to click and learn more. It made me question the ethics of Google, the owner of Youtube and Adsense, as to why they relentlessly showed me scams with no regard for my well-being.
Every single video on YouTube comes with one or two advertisements preceding it. AdSense, the largest advertising platform globally, raked in a staggering 147 billion dollars from online advertising in 2020.
These website banners, such as the one viewed before a video, serve as a profitable business model, funding the Google-operated services that we tend to overlook as free, like g-mail for example.
Unfortunately, there is a problem with these ads that is very different from what you might see on traditional…
