Have ads gone too far?

I’m increasingly hearing that the current ad blitz is actually harming brands and services more than bringing them in revenue, for example youtube blocking ad blockers (!) seems to annoy far more people than it helps. To be fair, it’s the more techy people who are annoyed, but it is getting worse and more annoying. I am watching Young Sheldon currently and it is on channel4.com in the UK and the ads – well they are getting far worse. Ads at the start, if you pause it another ad, blocks of ads for 2-3 minutes several times, and of course you cannot skip them any more. Now – this is more than just annoying and I’m now trying to find an alternative way to watch! Of course we know where this is leading to….
I used to pay for Youtube, but as that service has declined I cancelled my subscription – and the ads are, well, stopping me watching a lot of stuff. As you can see the ads are not having the desired effect. The amount of people trying to circumvent them is rising daily, people are fighting, and the tech companies are fighting back. This arms race doesn’t help anyone…

https://www.thedrum.com/profile/the-digital-voice/article/brands-are-wasting-budget-on-annoying-ads-that-do-more-harm-than-good-new-yougov-survey-finds

Now that survey is from 2023, newer surveys are either paywalled (!) or seem less well informed so I went with this. I’d say that those figures against ads have probably risen a huge amount recently, but with a lack of decent resources – well I’m just guessing. But based on the amount of people who ask me how to watch youtube and streaming services with no ads I’m 100% certain that the tipping point of people being turned off has been reached already….
This is of course food for thought – but I can see it only making ads worse not better as more money is ploughed into forcing them on us. I have posted numerous times about this but the age of free accounts is drawing to a close slowly as more and more services and platforms restrict free accounts so as to make them useless – and so the circle goes round another full turn as people try to get round them.