by SCOTT GILBERTSON
Few things are more annoying on the web than hitting a video site to watch a 30-second clip of something funny only to discover you have to sit through a 30-second advertisement first.
There are currently two types of video ads on YouTube, Hulu and their ilk: The first is the in-movie pop-up — the annoying box of text that covers the subtitles in your French film preview with an ad for floor cleaner. This breed is marked by a tiny X conveniently located right next to a link so marketers can prove they were right all along, that French people will jump at the opportunity to buy floor cleaner.
The second and far more annoying type of ad is the pre-roll ad, the actual video ads you have to sit through before you get to the content you want. It’s like someone turned your internet into television. Terrible.
Naturally there are ways to stop both sorts of ads, though dodging pre-roll ads is, in our experience, much more difficult. In fact, if you really want to banish every in-video ad, you’ll need the Firefox web browser. But even if you don’t use Firefox and don’t want to switch browsers you can at least stop the in-video popup ads and enjoy your subtitles uninterrupted.
Here’s our guide to blocking video ads on the web.