YouTube is in an advantaged position relative to other sites because they directly serve the ads from the same servers that serve the content. That’s why DNS blocking doesn’t work.
It would take more effort than they currently put in but they could track each user-session closely enough to require that the ad stream complete before the content stream is served.
If that happens, I think the next step in ad blocking would be to accept the ad stream but hide it from the user. Let it play silently in the background if necessary.
That’d mean accepting the extra data transfer but still avoiding the psychic damage.
YouTube is in an advantaged position relative to other sites because they directly serve the ads from the same servers that serve the content. That’s why DNS blocking doesn’t work.
It would take more effort than they currently put in but they could track each user-session closely enough to require that the ad stream complete before the content stream is served.
If that happens, I think the next step in ad blocking would be to accept the ad stream but hide it from the user. Let it play silently in the background if necessary.
That’d mean accepting the extra data transfer but still avoiding the psychic damage.