Channels & viewing

[MK4Ultra]

I totally believe so and agree. The Roku YouTube app displays more ads than my other streamers and mobile apps. It's 1 ad every 5 minutes and it's getting REALLY annoying and frustrating I don't even want to use the Roku anymore!!!

[Michael_Gee]

I wish someone from Roku would address this issue but I guess it's only users in here.
Yeah, I quit using mine for it. I'm now back to using the YouTube app on my Sony TV. That's not perfect either since after a while the audio starts to stutter. When that happens, I watch on my phone. Such a great streaming experience from these companies.

[Anonymous]

I just started a free 3 month trial of YouTube Premium. I have to say that  seeing no ads is really nice, I understand why they give away the free trials. It will be difficult to go back.

[Michael_Gee]

I bet. It's not so much the ads as the amount of them, which shouldn't be particular to a streaming device. I wonder if other streaming devices, such as Amazon Fire, suffer from this. I wouldn't recommend Roku to anyone who primarily watches YouTube for free because of this issue. 

[atc98092]

---

@Michael_Gee wrote:

I wish someone from Roku would address this issue but I guess it's only users in here.

---

There's nothing Roku can say about it. Google has sole control over when and how many ads are shown on YouTube. They stream their content to different devices from different servers, so they can easily do this. I have no doubt they increase the number of ads on Roku devices. Remember that Google sells a competing device, the Chromecast. They would love nothing more than for you to switch to their player. 

The ads on YouTube is why I only watch it on my Shield, which has an app available that blocks all advertising on YouTube. I don't mind ads on something offered for free, but the sheer number of them on a Roku or even the regular YouTube app on my Shield just makes me annoyed. 

[Michael_Gee]

Good to know it's not just Roku that is suffering from this issue. Thanks for that info.

[Cj14]

For the last couple years Zero you tube ads played on my TCL Roku TV if I didn't sign in to the site Then all of a sudden yesterday all my YouTube history on the TV was erased and Now ads are popping when I'm not signed in, it Sucks. I don't know who the culprit is I'm guessing Roku updated their software to screw me..

[RokuMary-F · Accepted solution]

Hi @Cj14,

Thanks for posting in the Roku Community!

For more information about that channel's features and functionality including ads, you'll want to contact the channel provider support directly to inquire further. Many channels on Roku are developed and maintained by the channel provider themselves.

You can reach Youtube Support here

We appreciate your patience with this matter.


Best regards,
Mary

[Michael_Gee]

I have reached out to YouTube community. I pretty much posted the result of my investigation into the number of ads on the Roku vs Samsung phone. They locked the post and wouldn't allow comments on it. This could be because their forum rules set comments to locked after 30 days. Also, someone reported that YouTube employees do not monitor this page so my posting my question there was probably not the best place.
As I might have previously mentioned, if Google is adding ads for specific streaming devices, devices that are in direct competition with Google's own streaming devices, this would be breaking some laws around unfair business practices. In addition, because of the extra ads, when speaking with someone about my preferences for streaming devices, I couldn't recommend Roku if free streaming of YouTube is something they would want to do with it.