Why are ads on youtube not being blocked?!

Hi,

you are assuming that the access is coming through the http proxy. Try disabling all your firewall rules and see if they can still access youtube?

Well, I do have my proxy setup to filter any/all web type traffic.
Also, the traffic definitely is going through the proxy, as I can see them clearly in the logs. However, it's not blocking them. Which is the problem.

Hi Jessieb,

Check out the link below:

https://community.sophos.com/products/unified-threat-management/f/web-protection-web-filtering-application-visibility-control/46207/speeding-up-webbrowsing-by-blocking-advertisers-and-trackers

We only went as far as steps 1 & 2. However, the result was that we now get very few (if any) ads at the start of any YouTube videos.

Hope this helps,

JP

Did all that initially when I setup the UTM. YouTube ads still got through. 

Today, I finally decided to spend time actually looking into this and figuring out why ads were still not being blocked. It looks like Google cleverly integrated them into Youtube as normal videos, only, including a specific query in the URL which classifies it as a specific type of ad or ad-video.

I've compiled a RegEx that works wonderfully and actually filters out YouTube ads while allowing normal non-ad videos to play just fine.

(([A-Za-z0-9.-\/]+)?)pageid\=[0-9]{1,30}

I've spent the last hour and a half making sure it works and videos work normally, while ads remain blocked. And sure enough, even VEVO videos shut out ads. :)

Here's an example URL I got this from, if you're interested : 

[code]https://www.youtube.com/get_video_metadata?video_id=ufkgkH7O4QA&html5=1&page_subscribe=0&authuser=0&pageid=108398601314690181974[/code]

Do you mind sharing where and how you setup this regex in Sophos?

I've noticed that Sophos has become pretty useless at blocking nearly any ads so I've resorted to setting up and using Pi-Hole instead. So far, that is working like a charm but the YouTube ad blocking isn't really working well in Pi-Hole. Would love to implement this to close the gap on blocking as many ads as I can.

Here you go!  [:D]

I don't know if I missed something or Youtube changed the way they serve the ads but for some reason I see the ads after applying the block. Is this method still working for you?

It's a possibility.  I'll investigate and see what I can find.

UTM blocks lots of ads for us, so  I have no complaints.  However, our usage is for business.  Home activities like gaming and video provide web developers with more tricks for inserting ads.

Great, thanks!