YouTube TV Runs the Same Commercial 5 Times in 20 Minutes - How to Try to Fight Back
Are you sick of the same streaming commercials over and over and over again? It’s an ongoing problem for those of us who watch live TV online.
I like to keep CNBC on YouTube TV as background noise while I work. And dear reader, I kept track today. I was served the exact same “Jay Leno’s Garage” commercial FIVE times during a 20-minute span from 9:38-9:58 a.m. Here it is, in case you want to play it relentlessly in a loop to lose your mind.
The same commercial plays throughout the day. I am taunted by Tiffany Haddish’s weird imitation of an engine noise. I flinch every time Jay’s giant head yells, “Yes!” I loathe every moment of the sonic assault of this ad. I want to set fire to Jay Leno and his garage. I want to salt the earth so nothing grows where the Jay Leno garage once stood. Let it be a memorial to the folly of advertisers in the streaming age.
In desperate search of relief, I clicked on the “Ad info” button in the upper left corner and received this message:
Upon clicking g.co/adsettings, you’ll see the information Google has collected about you. In my case, the data was wildly inaccurate. I have little interest in some of the topics Google thinks I may care about. Scrolling down, I saw these categories:
Sadly, there isn’t an option to turn off all ads from jug-headed former talk show hosts who should be entombed in their garages. But if you click on a topic, you have the option to manage your activity or turn it off entirely. You can also turn off ad personalization entirely at the top of the screen.
The hope is that turning off this “personalization” will flag Google that I don’t have whatever interests led them to believe I wanted to see Jay Leno more frequently than I see the people who live in my home. It’s not a guarantee that those ads will go away, but it’s possible you’re being served irrelevant or annoying ads based on a guess Google is making about you, based on your search or YouTube history.
After making that adjustment, I’m still getting blasted with the ad. In the course of writing this article alone, I’ve seen it five more times. While adjusting those ad settings may help overall, I’m still stuck with Jay and his enormous noggin until YouTube TV and/or CNBC decides I’ve had enough.
Unfortunately, there’s nothing to be done about repetitive commercials on other services like Pluto TV. In cases where you’re seeing the same ad every few minutes, it’s because there isn’t enough ad inventory to fill the commercial breaks. The services simply fill the time with ads they’ve already sold (or promos for shows on those channels) But from a user experience standpoint, this is incredibly annoying.