I’m sure that most people know about Youtube.
I can’t remember how long it’s been since it’s been implemented, but for a while now, Youtube has placed ads before the actual video plays. This doesn’t happen for ALL Youtube videos, but I do come across a video that has an advertisement preceding it at least twice a day. Basically what happens is, when you click on a video, a video advertisement will play (usually ~20 seconds in duration) before the Youtube video you intended to watch. You can’t stop the ad or skip the ad. The only way you could ‘avoid’ it, is if you mute the player and alt-tab.
Thankfully, these ads don’t appear on most Youtube videos. I usually see them on viral accounts that has a lot of traffic (example: vevo accounts that play official music videos).
Although these ads are annoying to me, I have to agree on their effectiveness. It forces viewers to watch it. Only way one could avoid them, if they were to stumble on one, is to mute and alt-tab/refresh. But how many people would actually put out that much effort to avoid video ads EVERY single time?
I’m thankful that Youtube has not implemented video ads for every single Youtube video. If they were to do so, many viewers would be irritated and I’m sure that a substitute giant video sharing website would emerge.