YouTube. It never fails to keep me entertained any time of the day. I’d watch anything: videos of gameplays, tutorials, and even random videos about random facts. I would use it anytime — if only I didn’t have to see the advertisements. 

YouTube isn’t a perfect platform. It has had its fair share of controversy regarding censorship, inappropriate contents, and even its search algorithm. While all these issues have been addressed by YouTube, it fails to fix one of its more appalling flaws: advertisement. More specifically, the increasing number of poorly made ads and the number of ads that are played in a single video. 

“Advertising is based on one thing: happiness.” This quote is from the television series Mad Men, and although it is based on the 60s and 70s, this quote still remains true today. A well-made advertisement discreetly shows how buying a product will result in a world of happiness and pleasure, leading people to put unquestioning faith in the product. However, many YouTube ads seem to throw this concept out the window. 

A good example of this are the advertisements for Mafia City, a mobile game app. Most ads for this game have nothing to do with the game itself. While Mafia City is a simulation game where players harvest resources and upgrade buildings, the advertisements show 3D animated gangsters starting from a low level, then suddenly gaining money out of nowhere, and becoming mafia bosses. The absurdity and randomness of the advertisement gained the internet’s attention to the point where the “That’s how mafia works” meme was created. 

Unfortunately, this attention only proved that such advertising strategy works, leading to a flood of similar ads on YouTube where the sole purpose is to grab the viewer's attention. To make matters worse, as more and more ads adopted this method, the contents of the ads evolved to be more provocative. Some advertisements incorporated obnoxious sounds and graphics, while others displayed close-ups of breasts and thigh shots of women. Granted, grabbing customers’ attention and sexual objectification of both men and women have been frequently used tactics in advertising, but never have those tactics been exploited this blatantly to the point that they’re distracting and offensive. 

To be honest, those ads would be bearable if they weren’t played every few minutes in a video — with ads at the beginning, at the end, and even during the video to distract the viewers. Why not double the number of ads by inserting two ads each time? And voilà, the typical YouTube video becomes a 10-minute video with six ads. I understand YouTube is not a profitable business model in the first place. It has to create some sort of revenue to keep the platform running, hence the act of plastering ads to annoy users into buying YouTube Premium. I do not mind watching ads, as long as they are well made — but what we see are flashing lights, weird bass drops, and 3D women with impossible body figures being shoved into our face every three to four minutes. Why doesn’t YouTube change? The answer is quite simple: YouTube is becoming a monopoly. No other website can replace what YouTube has today, which also means that the users don’t have an alternative. Whatever YouTube decides, we have to suck it up. Unless YouTube sets a certain standard,  there is no other choice for the viewers — except subscribing to a premium membership, of course.  

Before YouTube became popular in Korea, there were alternative video streaming platforms such as Naver, Daum, and PandoraTV. However, nowadays all of those websites are, if not gone, barely used. The reason why YouTube was so successful compared to those sites was its simplicity and lack of advertisements. The Korean streaming platforms had trending and recommended videos automatically playing on the main page and were filled with banners and in-video ads — very much like YouTube today. The hero became the very monster that it had defeated.