[HN Gopher] SponsorBlock - skip sponsor segments on YouTube
___________________________________________________________________
SponsorBlock - skip sponsor segments on YouTube
Author : anotherhue
Score : 581 points
Date : 2024-08-12 09:10 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (sponsor.ajay.app)
(TXT) w3m dump (sponsor.ajay.app)
| dangus wrote:
| Also extra useful: iSponsorBlockTV. You run it in on a server and
| you can set it up with the YouTube app on all your commercial
| streaming boxes that don't support browser extensions.
|
| https://github.com/dmunozv04/iSponsorBlockTV
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| How does this work, how does it get between the client and
| youtube.com?
| synchrone wrote:
| It uses the tv youtube app remote control over local network
| to see if it plays a video, and skips at the right time.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| Ha. What a fantastic piece of hack. Absolutely brilliant.
| Love it.
| post_break wrote:
| Oh my god I could kiss you. It works on AppleTV.
| jocaal wrote:
| The creator of this extension also makes DeArrow [1]. It replaces
| the clickbait thumbnails and titles with less annoying ones. I
| highly recommend it.
|
| [1] https://dearrow.ajay.app/
| rendaw wrote:
| Whoah, how does it do that? It looks like magic, so does it
| handle the clickbait use of "this" as well ("this game", "this
| recipe", "this film")?
|
| I'm using one that just decapitalizes and uses a random frame
| thumbnail from the middle, which is okay.
| gabegm wrote:
| According to the extension homepage:
|
| "DeArrow is an open source browser extension for
| crowdsourcing better titles and thumbnails on YouTube. The
| goal is to make titles accurate and reduce sensationalism. No
| more arrows, ridiculous faces, and no more clickbait.
|
| ...
|
| There are currently 64,634 users who have submitted 230,432
| titles and 107,027 thumbnails."
| zamadatix wrote:
| Oh my god, what a difference it made. Thanks for sharing this.
| I do wish this could have just been a feature tacked on the
| Sponsor Block extension, especially considering it has features
| which rely on that data, but otherwise it's perfect.
|
| For those that haven't watched the demo video: for videos that
| don't have community thumbnails or titles it has options
| allowing it to automatically pick a random (non-sponsor
| segment) screenshot and automatically clean up the title
| (remove emoji, fix capitalization).
| xdennis wrote:
| I used to use it, unfortunately it doesn't work so well with
| titles. It lowercases unknown acronyms and initcaps all words
| even in languages which Do Not Use This Capitalization For
| Titles.
| teddyh wrote:
| You can change that in the settings.
| jug wrote:
| Yeah, Clickbait Remover extension is similar. It's available
| for all main browsers and replaces the egregious thumbnails
| with a frame from either the first, middle, or last part of the
| video. I like it!
| MaxikCZ wrote:
| I stopped using this because I found out that I want that
| custom thumbnails and tittles as a signal of quality. Many
| thumbnails will signal which creator made the vid at first
| glance, where before I sometimes missed video from channel I
| have involuntary vocal reaction whenever they release a new vid
| (exurb1a).
|
| Its also very helpfull for determining the quality of the video
| itself. Usually from that one picture I can tell that even if
| the video is about a topic I'd like to know more about, I
| definetly dont want to learn in that specific video. Removing
| this signal made me waste way more time in videos that seemed
| good from the tittle alone.
| aniforprez wrote:
| I found this extension significantly less useful than
| SponsorBlock. The "less clickbait" titles are all invariably
| written in a worse fashion and are overtly wordy and annoying.
| The non-clickbait thumbnails looked worse and were mostly
| random screencaps of unrelated portions of the video because
| most people didn't bother picking a proper screenshot. My
| barometer for this was Tom Scott's channel which generally has
| titles that are mostly all fine yet a lot of them were
| "rewritten" for no reason that I could discern
|
| SponsorBlock is significantly more useful but you still see the
| same kind of annoying people there too. There's a channel
| called "11foot8" that puts out videos of the local 11'8" (+ 8"
| after they raised it semi-recently) where trucks disobey the
| height warning and get destroyed. Most of the videos are around
| 1 minute long yet there are people picking "highlight" moments
| in SponsorBlock to skip to the relevant portion. These are
| mostly videos about a minute long so it baffles me the kind of
| people whose attention span is that short to want to skip 10
| whole seconds to get to the "action". These are the kind of
| annoying people that rule DeArrow. I didn't want to deal with
| that anymore
| noone_youknow wrote:
| As a YouTuber, I'm conflicted about this. My main channel (non-
| tech) is small, but is monetised, and YouTube see fit to throw me
| a _very_ variable amount of money every month. CPMs are down
| right now so revenue has tanked along with it, it'll pick back up
| at some point, but the variability is itself the pain point. My
| videos are relatively expensive and time consuming to make, but
| people seem to find them useful, and even enjoyable. The
| occasional (relevant) sponsor read or similar has been a huge
| help in providing some stability in the past, and I know for many
| channels it's the main source of income since YPP revenue share
| can be so volatile.
|
| I do worry that if this takes off it will just result in those
| sponsors pulling their budgets for this type of advertising, and
| it'll be another nail in the coffin for creators. Sure many of us
| also do patreon etc but that's never really sat right with me
| personally (and see also the post on HN just today about Apple
| coming for a revenue split there for another creator-hostile
| storm brewing).
|
| On the other hand, I totally get the hatred of "the usual
| suspect" sponsors (VPNs, low-quality learning platforms etc) that
| get done to death because of their aggressive sponsor budgets and
| not-unreasonable deals. Those get shoehorned into a ton of videos
| and it's a shame, but a blunt instrument like this is likely to
| kill off sponsorships as a whole, not just those bad ones.
| efilife wrote:
| Don't do your videos for money. You are interrupting users that
| pay for YouTube premium with ads in the middle of your videos.
| Set up a way to donate to you on YouTube, channel memberships
| are an option, they display next to the "subscribe button".
| noone_youknow wrote:
| > Don't do your videos for money.
|
| This is of course a valid suggestion, and there are many,
| many creators that do this. However I think the world would
| be a poorer place if we lost all the creators that do need to
| make _some_ money for their channels to survive, which IMHO
| is the natural endgame if we remove or block all routes to
| passive monetisation.
|
| I do get the issue with premium, as a premium subscriber
| myself I too find it annoying to be interrupted by yet
| another 30-second (or increasingly, more) read for some shady
| VPN or whatever.
|
| Channel memberships, like patreon etc., are an option, but
| have a vanishingly small rate of uptake, and people expect
| some sort of value-add in return (early access to videos, a
| discord, and so on). Without other routes to revenue this
| just devalues the content itself, which I feel may be part of
| the problem here - we no longer value attach value to quality
| content. Rick Beato made a great video on the effects of this
| (in the music industry) recently, and it's not great - but it
| does feel like all media is going a similar way.
| Sakos wrote:
| I often pay for Patreon to get uncensored videos. Youtube
| by itself already devalues videos in various ways and
| avenues like Patreon let creators provide what they
| actually want to provide, not just what YouTube allows them
| to.
| noone_youknow wrote:
| That's great, I'm glad that you're supporting creators
| directly and getting value from it too. But unfortunately
| you're in the minority in my experience, for every person
| who does this, there are hundreds who wouldn't even
| consider it.
|
| For creators making certain kinds of content the
| "uncensored" and "non-ad-friendly" topics are a great
| argument for direct sponsorship etc, I definitely agree.
| Sakos wrote:
| If by "certain" you mean anybody covering anything from
| movies to songs to games to whatever else, yes. I mean
| "those" creators. It's extremely easy to fall afoul of
| YouTube's Draconian censorship. I'm not talking about sex
| games. I'm talking about YouTube demonetizing anything
| they want for arbitrary reasons.
|
| I feel you're not recognising the issue and what Patreon
| solves, and why relying on YouTube for revenue is simply
| not an option for anybody.
| noone_youknow wrote:
| Well, what I had in mind by "certain" is probably really
| "not me". I'm fully aware how easy it is to fall foul of
| the ad-friendly guidelines, and have had more than one
| video demonetised for "reasons" myself. I'm also very
| aware that tying one's entire revenue to a single
| platform isn't a good strategy in _any_ business, it's
| not limited to YouTube (but I can see an argument for it
| being worse there specifically).
|
| I really do recognise the issue, being in it myself. I do
| have patreon (and others) for other projects and it's
| another revenue stream, which is great. But for my
| YouTube main channel I believe the content itself has
| value, and having to pour time and resources into
| building a value-add package devalues it - both in the
| immediate (since I would now have less time to devote to
| content creation) and longer term (since it makes it
| essentially a leader for my value add packages).
|
| (Some larger creators I know do manage to carve out some
| revenue on patreon etc without any "perk package" but I
| think for that to work it becomes even more of a numbers
| game, and won't help small creators just getting started.
| I'm also putting aside the recent announcements ref. The
| App Store etc since they're not directly relevant here).
| Sakos wrote:
| If you aren't able to get enough funding through Patreon,
| then it's simply because you haven't found a large enough
| or the right audience yet. It has nothing to do with
| value add. Not every viewer is going to subscribe to you
| on Patreon. Even the biggest channels I have subbed on
| Patreon have a fraction of their viewers on Patreon of
| what they have on YouTube, yet it's more than sufficient
| to fund an entire well-off lifestyle based on it.
| lrvick wrote:
| You can also time delay any content .
|
| Supporters get access via paid LBRY views or access to
| unlisted or privately hosted videos right away, and they
| are published a month later for free on public platforms.
| kelnos wrote:
| I just don't personally find that sort of thing
| compelling. For the kinds of videos I watch, it doesn't
| matter to me if I watch it today or a month from now.
|
| I think paywalled bonus content has the most value. A
| creator has a lot of control in that sense: if they are
| not making enough money, they can shift more of their
| free content behind the paywall. Certainly there's a
| point where viewers will get mad and leave, and/or what's
| available for free won't be enough to attract new paid
| subscribers, but there's still wiggle room.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| > Don't do your videos for money. You are interrupting users
| that pay for YouTube premium with ads in the middle of your
| videos. Set up a way to donate to you on YouTube, channel
| memberships are an option, they display next to the
| "subscribe button".
|
| You shouldn't work for money either. Just do it for free.
| krapp wrote:
| We live in a capitalist society, and most people are forced
| to work to make ends meet. Being able to choose to put in
| what amounts to full time hours on a passion project isn't
| a privilege most people have.
|
| You, presumably, wouldn't work for free, why do you insist
| that artists should entertain you for free?
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| > You, presumably, wouldn't work for free, why do you
| insist that artists should entertain you for free?
|
| You didn't understand my post. I don't insist that
| artists entertain for free. I was responding to the
| parent who said "don't make videos for money". I am in
| fact a full-time content creator.
| krapp wrote:
| My mistake then.
|
| I encounter that attitude a lot here so I guess I jumped
| to conclusions.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| Yeah, I get that!
| efilife wrote:
| YouTube isn't work and I doubt this person creates videos
| for a living. I assume this is just extra money this person
| wants, not _needs_. Many years ago YouTube was about
| hobbyists, and nobody complained. I 'm sick of the attitude
| to monetize everything. I listed a few non-intrusive
| options, just don't be hostile to your viewers shoving them
| sponsored crap in the middle of videos
| dageshi wrote:
| For a lot of people, it is work and the quality is vastly
| better for it. Youtube in the past wasn't a replacement
| for tv, now given the quality many creators put into
| their work, it is.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _YouTube isn 't work_
|
| In the beginning of YouTube, true. But nowadays YouTube
| _is_ work for a lot of people. It 's their primary source
| of income, even. It's pointless to say, "well, that's not
| how it should be". It is, and that's the reality of the
| situation.
|
| And, frankly, the production value of a lot of stuff on
| YouTube is _amazing_. That doesn 't come for free, in the
| form of recording equipment, set design and purchasing,
| and just plain old time to write scripts and do post-
| production work. There's no reason that stuff at that
| middle quality level (between random guy with a handheld
| smartphone and professional studio production) shouldn't
| exist. I think it's amazing that people can make such
| high quality content, without having to get past e.g. a
| hollywood studio gatekeeper.
|
| In the past, TV was traditionally paid for through
| advertising and syndication, and movies through ticket
| sales, and VHS/DVD/Bluray sales. Nowadays there are so
| many more ways for people to distribute their creations,
| and more ways for viewers to compensate them for those
| creations.
|
| The thing that sucks is that we are still so stuck on
| this ad-supported model, not that people want to put
| enough work into their creations that it needs to be a
| paid full-time job.
| prmoustache wrote:
| >YouTube isn't work
|
| Youtube isn't work but producing videos at a decent
| quality and frequency is. It happens that a large amount
| of them are distributed through Youtube.
| erklik wrote:
| > blunt instrument like this is likely to kill off sponsorships
| as a whole
|
| That's the dream. Ads are a poison and a blight.
|
| Removing them is something many users, including me welcome. If
| one wants money for their videos, they're welcome to actually
| allow getting payments i.e. patreon, the "Youtube
| sponsorship"-thing.
| noone_youknow wrote:
| Sure, I totally get that. I'm no fan of being advertised to
| myself and as a premium subscriber I do find sponsor segments
| - especially poorly-places ones - just as annoying as
| everyone else when watching YouTube - which is why I said I
| was conflicted in my earlier comment.
|
| However as I mentioned in another reply in this thread,
| removing routes to monetisation and devaluing content in
| general (by making it be effectively a loss-leader for value-
| add sponsorships or memberships) will only have the effect of
| making YouTube non-viable for many, and especially those who
| necessarily have higher production values to make better
| quality (I'm thinking more thoroughly-researched, more
| interesting, that sort of thing) content.
| lrvick wrote:
| Making YouTube non-viable is the entire point. Google
| should not be the gatekeeper for the world's content, or
| get to decide who wins and loses in a rat race trying to
| keep up with algorithms built to keep users addicted to low
| quality advertizer friendly content.
|
| The end game of ad blocking tech is to make ads a non
| viable source of revenue so creators will move on to
| ethical platforms like LBRY or peertube where creators are
| in charge again and users can pay them directly with no
| corrupt middle-men .
|
| I would suggest being an early adopter on alternative
| platforms building a direct relationship with a more
| independent donation-motivated audience before everyone
| else does.
| eropple wrote:
| These are platforms with worse availability and worse
| affordances, ranging to nonfunctional once you're on a
| mobile device. Adblocking technology isn't going to make
| them better. Making them better is going to make them
| better, but the unit economics remain not in their favor.
|
| A more likely future is _less video_ rather than _people
| move to PeerTube and shake an upturned hat for
| donations_. Which doesn 't bother me much, but is likely
| to invoke the FAFO gator on a lot of folks.
| pino82 wrote:
| > A more likely future is less video
|
| You mean I could get a f...ing text again about things,
| which I could just read at my own speed, skip back and
| forth by just moving my eyes, use the search function,
| skip pieces of it, etc etc, in just two minutes instead
| of ten minutes watching a video clip for the most trivial
| statements?
|
| What a baaad world that would be...
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >You mean I could get a f...ing text again about things
|
| Tone aside, we already do that... it's also monetized and
| being AI-slopified as we speak. Much faster than video.
|
| in this scenario where videos become non-viable, people
| would ujst paywall their text like many journalists have
| resorted to. There's no free lunch these days.
| kalleboo wrote:
| The videos aren't going to be replaced with text, they're
| going to be replaced with nothing. Text died because it
| is too hard to get paid for, banner ads paid peanuts to
| begin with and are now trivial to block. Video ads paid
| really well which is why people started making video
| content, if video ads also die, then there is simply
| going to be no content.
| maxglute wrote:
| There's going to be less content, which will likely still
| be more than enough content.
| consteval wrote:
| > A more likely future is less video
|
| I would say less big budget video. If we're being honest,
| YouTube is essentially television at this point. Many
| YouTube views, maybe even most, don't go towards
| individual creators. They go to Studios and the Jimmy
| Kimmel's of the world.
|
| If someone like boxxy is making videos with a potato cam
| on her bedroom floor, I don't think she necessarily cares
| much about the monetization.
|
| That USED to be the entire draw and appeal of YouTube.
| Then monetization came and surprise! The platform changed
| to be more monetizable, i.e. watered down and corporate.
| pino82 wrote:
| Exactly that. But surprisingly, although I'd consider it
| as a trivial insight, we're living in a world that just
| doesn't want to understand that.
|
| And while YT is a lot about casual nonsense, there are
| other big tech walled gardens, where content fights
| against some corporate-controlled algorithms, but the
| content is our entire public discourse nowadays. :( And
| people still do not want to understand what a terribly
| bad idea that is...
| manuelmoreale wrote:
| Aren't you, as a YouTuber, in the same position as many
| creators that do the same on other mediums? There are
| people out there who write amazing blog posts but now the
| traditional advertising world is basically dead and people
| have to figure out other ways to make it work.
|
| Or they have to accept that what they do is not a full time
| job but rather a hobby and they need to find other ways to
| earn a living.
|
| Writing is no longer viable for many. I don't see why
| YouTube should be this special case.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >Writing is no longer viable for many. I don't see why
| YouTube should be this special case.
|
| >Writing is no longer viable for many. I don't see why
| YouTube should be this special case.
|
| because Youtube is owned by a trillion dollar corporation
| but mostly powered by content creators. Substack isn't.
|
| It's really that simple. most wringing isn't viable
| because there's no money in it, literally. There still is
| money in video ads.
| manuelmoreale wrote:
| I'm not asking why it is. I'm asking why it should be.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Why what should be? Why platforms with money pay people
| with no money? Why platforms with no money shut down?
|
| It's not a very fun answer. Google gets a lot of ads to
| pay then to shove ads down the consumer's throats, and
| they can do this with no risk of users migrating. They
| "should" get more money because they more effectly do
| this than news websites, which have failed to appeal to
| advertisers effectively enough.
|
| I don't really know what to do with that answer, though.
| Accept I'm the minority that will subscribe to paid
| avenues to support creators (or even care about other
| creator's well beings?) and move on?
| manuelmoreale wrote:
| No I'm asking why we should look at people who make video
| on YouTube differently than any other type of creator who
| publish elsewhere.
|
| The original post I was replying to said:
|
| > However as I mentioned in another reply in this thread,
| removing routes to monetisation and devaluing content in
| general (by making it be effectively a loss-leader for
| value-add sponsorships or memberships) will only have the
| effect of making YouTube non-viable for many, and
| especially those who necessarily have higher production
| values to make better quality (I'm thinking more
| thoroughly-researched, more interesting, that sort of
| thing) content.
|
| And my answer was that this is no different than any
| other type of creator online.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| > I'm asking why we should look at people who make video
| on YouTube differently than any other type of creator who
| publish elsewhere.
|
| I don't know who's "we" here. But that's simply
| psychological. You will look at [person who make lots of
| money] differently from [person who can barely cover
| rent], if only because the latter may need more help you
| may be able to give.
|
| There's no "should" here. And influencers aren't limited
| to YouTube. all my answers come down to "because they are
| backed by a trillion dollar corporation"
|
| >And my answer was that this is no different than any
| other type of creator online.
|
| Maybe instead of "but no one else makes money" to drag
| down, we should change the lens to "let's reward other
| mediums for being high quality and throrougly researched"
| to boost up other mediums of creation.
|
| Especially in a time where we are already getting so much
| slop and misinformation (and we're not even close to the
| worst of the storm). I'm sure you seen enough of the
| internet to know most people will just accept the slop
| and at best take years of introspection before they
| realize why quality matters (others never do).
| ndriscoll wrote:
| Assuming when you say thoroughly researched, you're looking
| for high quality educational information, the highest
| quality videos are generally from a camera pointed at a
| blackboard/whiteboard recording a lecture that an expert
| was already going to give. Not a lot of production value
| necessary.
| chankstein38 wrote:
| I'm not trying to be offensive or hostile but, as much as I
| value the higher-quality content on youtube, if youtube
| went back to being just a place people posted videos of
| themselves doing stuff instead of what effectively amounts
| to studios making youtube content, I'd consider that a win.
|
| Again, not that your content isn't likely appreciated by
| your audience and valuable. I just miss the days of youtube
| just being a fun video platform instead of another TV
| channel.
| sdoering wrote:
| D'accord
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| > I just miss the days of youtube just being a fun video
| platform instead of another TV channel.
|
| It's another effect of the economy. Programmers are
| traditionally well compensated, so they can use their
| free time literally giving away knowledge for others.
| Because they don't need to monetize that knowledge to
| survive.
|
| Video editing: not so much. If you want more people just
| having fun you need some part of the economy making sure
| they pay rent. Hence, hustle culture. It'd still exist if
| everyone was comfy, but many people would instead focus
| on leisure over minmaxing money.
| lifthrasiir wrote:
| It greatly depends on the audience, but for many cases,
| unfortunately, it's more likely the case that _you_ are
| dreaming.
|
| Typical income flows for streamers include:
|
| 1. Passive advertising from video and stream platforms (which
| many adblockers do block)
|
| 2. Active advertising via sponsorships (which SponsorBlock
| wants to block)
|
| 3. Live stream donations
|
| 4. Video/stream-independent donations, most usually via
| Patreon
|
| 5. Paid "premium" or behind-the-scene programmes (partly
| overlaps with video/stream-independent donations due to their
| obvious weaknesses)
|
| 6. Merchandises
|
| And not all streamers can do them at once. Live stream
| donations only work for some genres of streaming and it is
| easy to stress audiences. Usual donations may or may not
| work, but it is usually thought to be weaker than live stream
| donations due to its passiveness (unless you come up with
| very different perks, but then your income is completely
| independent from streaming).
|
| Many high-profile channels rely greatly on merchandises
| because it does have significant margins if you can keep
| launching enough of them, but they are especially risky when
| your channel and/or stream is not large enough. So smaller
| channels have traditionally relied on passive advertising,
| but its flaws are well known and discussed to the death by
| now. (If you need a list though, higher processing fees,
| prevalence of adblocking, generally too low income to be
| sustainable, extreme platform dependence etc.) This leaves
| active advertising as a compelling option for smaller
| streamers, at least for now.
|
| While I do loathe most kind of advertising, active
| advertising like this is something I can (barely) tolerate
| because it is meant to be performed by streamers themselves,
| unlike passive advertising which rarely relates to the
| streamer or content itself. And I'm afraid that there doesn't
| seem to be any other viable option remaining. I can always
| skip an ad portion of a video if I do find it annoying
| anyway.
| account42 wrote:
| If blocking ads means for-profit video creators go out of
| business then so be it. There will always be those who do
| it because it is something they enjoy and usually that kind
| of content is more worthwhile anyway.
| lifthrasiir wrote:
| You are free to do so, but your claim won't work for most
| of my favorite creators and streamers. Thank you.
| 0dayz wrote:
| And I'll agree with you the day we all decide to pay a
| monthly fee that is big enough to support various websites
| and creators.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| Why? As a HN-er/content creator, I don't see why it would
| be taken for granted that people need to be paid for their
| hobbies. In fact many people post online for enjoyment.
| ESTheComposer wrote:
| If you're a HN-er you should know the culture of HN is
| very old school and fringe mentality. E.g:
|
| - Flip phones are celebrated in some threads because
| people don't want smart phones (extreme minority in real
| life)
|
| - Disabling JS and pushing sites to go back to just raw
| HTML CSS (with some even not understanding why we need
| JS, extreme minority irl. IRL site owners care about
| attracting customers and the things they want to do can't
| be done with raw HTML CSS much of the time)
|
| - Kagi taking off. IRL most people still do and will
| continue to Google
|
| - People acting like if ads were disabled forever the
| population would totally pay for things they like (IRL
| people don't, there's a reason piracy is big. People want
| the things they want for the cheapest cost possible)
|
| HN is a very specific type of tech-centric bubble
| shiroiushi wrote:
| >IRL people don't, there's a reason piracy is big.
|
| It is? That's not my observation. In fact, music piracy
| seems to be all but dead, thanks to the streaming
| services. Movie piracy is not, and seems to be increasing
| (hard to say though), because of people getting
| frustrated with the fragmentation of streaming; back in
| Netflix's heyday, it seemed like movie piracy was much
| smaller, because you could just pay $7/month to Netflix
| and watch whatever you wanted.
|
| >People want the things they want for the cheapest cost
| possible
|
| No, most people want convenience. That's why music piracy
| is basically dead. Piracy is usually a PITA, and it's
| easy to subscribe to Spotify or Apple Music and listen to
| everything you want. Piracy is usually a service problem,
| not an economics problem.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| > Movie piracy is not, and seems to be increasing (hard
| to say though), because of people getting frustrated with
| the fragmentation of streaming
|
| I feel that proves the point. When everything is all
| together for $20 people don't mind. when it's spread out,
| people are too lazy to sub/unsub to other $20 services as
| needed to watch content on demand. Someone that's a heavy
| enough power user to watch that much TV shouldn't mind
| paying $100+ to keep up. Premium cable was way more
| expensive and restrictive back in the day.
|
| Meanwhile, all that conversation and none of these
| streaming services are even profitable. Because giving
| all your content away for rent isn't financially viable.
| But it's still too much for lazy consumers. So the entire
| thing collapses.
|
| >No, most people want convenience. That's why music
| piracy is basically dead.
|
| It's also why people completely raged when Netflix and
| GamePass increased prices. There definitely is a breaking
| point for many (past the ones who complain about every
| price hike on the internet but stay subscribed).
|
| >Piracy is usually a service problem
|
| Everytime I hear this, I simply need to point to the
| mobile industry to prove it wrong (or maybe right? Just
| not the way people think is "fair"). They fixed piracy by
| doing the classic Web dev action: Keep everything
| valuable on your server. The APK you pirate is worthless,
| as it is simply a thin client into their actual value.
|
| We know how the rest ends from there.
| shiroiushi wrote:
| >I feel that proves the point. When everything is all
| together for $20 people don't mind.
|
| I think this proves _my_ point, that it 's a service
| problem. Put everything together in a single, easy-to-use
| service for a low price (like Netflix in 2012), and only
| the true die-hards will still bother with piracy. Ask
| them to subscribe to a whole bunch of services (with a
| high total cost) or try to figure out how to save money
| by strategically subscribing and unsubscribing to see the
| stuff they want, and have to deal with shows suddenly
| disappearing or moving to a competing service when
| they're half-finished watching them, and many will simply
| go back to torrenting because it's honestly easier than
| all that BS. But instead you think people are "lazy"... A
| lazy person doesn't do torrenting; it's really not that
| easy.
|
| >Premium cable was way more expensive and restrictive
| back in the day.
|
| Back then, 1) there weren't many alternatives. At the
| beginning of cable TV's reign, videotapes weren't even
| commonly available. And 2) back then, people had more
| disposable income because the cost-of-living was much,
| much lower (particularly housing). Technology is much
| better now too, so people expect to pay less.
|
| >Meanwhile, all that conversation and none of these
| streaming services are even profitable.
|
| Citation needed. Last I checked, Netflix is doing quite
| well, and even better after cracking down on the
| password-sharing.
|
| >It's also why people completely raged when Netflix and
| GamePass increased prices.
|
| _Some_ people raged, but Netflix 's subscriber count has
| increased and profits are up, so obviously those people
| either got over it, or were a small minority.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| in all fairness, I'm sure Kagi is aware it's serving a
| niche right now. It's more a matter if that niche (maybe
| a few thousand consistent subscibers?) can support their
| infrastructure. You don't need to compete with Google to
| make a good living.
| labcomputer wrote:
| I'm sort of amazed this has to be explicitly stated:
|
| Because most YouTube creators (even the hobbyists) are at
| least partially motivated by money, and if you take away
| all the money they will likely make less content or stop
| altogether. I understand that it's fun to get things for
| free, but that's usually not sustainable.
| sdoering wrote:
| If they want to make money, they are totally free to have
| a website hosting their content behind a paywall.
|
| Than I can decide if their content is worth money to me
| (let me tell you: in 999 out of 1000 "creators" it
| isn't).
|
| But I already pay for a few select content creators. And
| happily shell out more than I would pay YT for an adfree
| experience.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Spoilers: the 1 out of 1000's won't get your money either
| because of any number of arbitrary reasons unrelated to
| their craft that is conjured up.
|
| - Slow website/video host? Great now they need to pay for
| a better host or pay a web dev to optimize their site.
|
| - Not responive? now that dev/service needs more money.
|
| - pay is too much (meanwhile they still can't even make
| minimum wage)? Well, their fault for valuing themselves
| over a McDonalds' employee
|
| - they pivot to premium teaching and now are a "scam"?
| Why am I here, I can google and learn this for free on
| Youtube
|
| You can't win with some people.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| The point is that's fine, and it is perfectly sustainable
| for people to do things they enjoy for free. It'd perhaps
| not be sustainable for someone to play video games as a
| full-time job, but maybe that's okay (or even desirable
| from a societal resource allocation standpoint)?
| xena wrote:
| Simply make rent, housing, and food free. Then people
| need not make money for the majority of needs.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| Indeed:
|
| https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/what-is-gen-
| zs-no...
|
| > According to a recent report by decision intelligence
| company Morning Consult, which surveyed over 2,000 adults
| in the U.S., 57% of Gen Zers said they'd be an influencer
| if given the opportunity, compared to 41% of adults from
| all age groups.
|
| If true, possibly the most damning rebuttal of UBI
| proponents that there is.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I don't see how. They are young adults and of course they
| want to be [flashy job]. Some may do it out of passion,
| some will inevitably realize the platform exploits them
| and moves on so they can have stability, or pay rent.
| Trust me, I'm a game dev, the 2000's version of this,
| succeeded by the band musicians of the 90's/80's.
|
| UBI would bring out more passionate people and not force
| the passionate but disheartened to drop out. meanwhile,
| the passionate who do stick it will optimize for money.
| So they can pay rent. Or worse, the unpassionate
| marketers take over and the discipline is reduced to slop
| (we've probably been here for ~10 years now).
| ndriscoll wrote:
| Because they're saying if they could sustain themselves,
| they'd have their job be to... eat at restaurants, play
| video games, travel, try on clothes, wear makeup, etc.
| Basically be an exact conservative caricature of
| socialists.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| The irony is that its a caricature of rich nepo babies
| under consumer capitalism vs socialism. In a pure
| socialist society (good example of this is US government
| or military jobs) you still work and there wouldn't be
| such striking wealth inequality on display.
| kelnos wrote:
| I think that's fine, though. Maybe we should have
| different platforms. Maybe we have a platform just for
| people who post stuff out of love for their craft, and
| don't expect any sort of compensation. And then we have a
| platform for people who want to monetize, and the
| platform itself has a subscription fee that gets
| distributed to creators based on views, or... something.
| Anything, really.
|
| Maybe this could all be YouTube, but creators decide on a
| per-video basis whether they're uploading publicly or
| only to paid viewers. I dunno, there are so many other
| models.
|
| The current situation with YouTubers asking people to
| subscribe to their Patreon or whatever is so weird, since
| often they have to distribute patron perks outside of
| YouTube, or via unlisted links, or whatever. I assume
| Google hasn't built in paid subscriptions option for fear
| of anti-trust regulation, but an integrated solution like
| that would likely be better for both creators and
| viewers.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| They do have that functionality[0]. The elephant in the
| room to me when discussing these things is that people
| _aren 't wrong_ when they won't pay for most "content".
| The overwhelming majority of it brainless filler-noise
| that a lot of people probably only look at because they
| don't know what else to do with their time. If actually
| pressed to come up with how much they'd pay for it, they
| correctly come up with $0 as the answer. Unfortunately,
| they don't then figure that it's not worth their
| attention either.
|
| [0] https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7636690
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| > Maybe we should have different platforms. Maybe we have
| a platform just for people who post stuff out of love for
| their craft, and don't expect any sort of compensation
|
| There are plenty of alternative video hosting sites if
| you seek that. So, why are you still on Youtube?
|
| >but creators decide on a per-video basis whether they're
| uploading publicly or only to paid viewers. I dunno,
| there are so many other models.
|
| Sure, works for Onlyfans. they even blend in both
| subscriptions AND PPV behind the sub. And we know how
| quality that content is (no offense to the models there.
| but come on, I've seen $100 for 2 pictures, behind a
| $20/month subscription. You're not 2000's Brittany
| Spears).
|
| > I assume Google hasn't built in paid subscriptions
| option for fear of anti-trust regulation
|
| They do. CC's can enable Memberships and upload videos
| specific to that.
|
| The issue is that
|
| 1. the memberships are small for many right now.
| Conseuqnces of being late to the party.
|
| 2. what's offered isn't necessarily going to be even
| higher quality than a public video.
|
| 3. ad rev from non-subbed views is still signifigant.
| Making a paid subscription for certain videos can mean
| brining in less money.
|
| 4. That lower view count affects your algorithm for
| growing.
|
| It's complex. And sadly, outside of the OF model most
| people simply don't want to pay for content. They get
| bored and they move to Tiktok and that's the real endgame
| should YT fall.
| maxglute wrote:
| Less content frequently better content. Hobby as content
| job may just not be sustainable in another form. Tons of
| hobbyist creators jumped on the full time content mill
| job and burn out. Maybe in another world they have their
| hobby on the side and put out 1/10th content slowly,
| without the incentive to make filler to keep bills paid.
| TBH sometimes when work and passion mix, passion takes a
| back seat. It would be different if youtube algo doesn't
| incentivize this type of content milling, but it does.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| I wouldn't pay real money other than my YT Premium, so I'm
| fine with sponsor reads. I'm not alone.
| zamadatix wrote:
| As I understand it YouTube Premium viewers result in
| significantly more revenue than ad based viewers do [1] but
| represent a tiny fraction of viewers [2] and can't be
| targeted separately. I.e. if most people were willing to
| pay in just one way, even if that were just YouTube
| Premium, then there wouldn't be such a strong incentive for
| channels to rely on sponsored segments but most people
| prefer not paying anything and dealing with ads and/or
| sponsored segments instead leaving those that do a bit
| stuck with the latter.
|
| [1] Just one example https://www.reddit.com/r/youtubegaming
| /comments/p1qmgu/conte... [2]
| https://backlinko.com/youtube-users
| CuriousSkeptic wrote:
| I would buy premium in a heartbeat if it actually
| filtered out all ads and sponsored content. Not just the
| segment, the entire video should be cut if its creation
| was influenced by "impressions" or what ever filler
| content is measured in.
|
| The current deal gives me no value, it just distributes
| more money to promote quantity crap over quality.
|
| Someone needs to figures out how to take my money and
| distribute them to people working on actually valuable
| stuff.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >Someone needs to figures out how to take my money and
| distribute them to people working on actually valuable
| stuff.
|
| why do you need a financial advisor to donate to Patreon
| or even Youtube memberships now? The models are about as
| easy to (un)subscribe from as you can get, while allowing
| granular control.
|
| Do you really want some "index fund" where you trust
| someone else to use your money to fund "good creators"?
| That sounds like a capitalist's wet dreams. And a
| consumer hellscape.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >Do you really want some "index fund" where you trust
| someone else to use your money to fund "good creators"?
| That sounds like a capitalist's wet dreams. And a
| consumer hellscape.
|
| Yes, I have a limited amount of time so I use curators
| (or algorithms) to narrow down what I might most like.
| For example, people used to pay HBO and other TV
| networks, or these days, Apple/Netflix/Amazon/Disney/etc.
| maxglute wrote:
| Yeah I have premium and TBH expect creators over XYZ size
| to spend a few minutes to timestamp/chapter their
| sponsorships and youtube to enable autoskipping. Or have
| youtube crawl through transcripts and figure it out.
|
| The problem is the people willing to pay for premium
| likely much more valuable customers for sponsorships to
| target.
| throw10920 wrote:
| Direct payment is good, but Patreon-type models are unfair
| (for both consumers and creators), inefficient (in terms of
| both time and money spent by consumers), and unscalable (to
| anything but a tiny fraction of the economy).
|
| We need direct microtransactions on the per-video/content-
| item level.
| Refusing23 wrote:
| I will either block/skip ads or not use youtube
|
| instead of having a "sponsored" segment where you talk about
| some product (basically an ad) you could just make the whole
| video about that product, and thus sponsorblock wouldnt really
| be used - i mean, sorta like product reviews
| noone_youknow wrote:
| Well, that's your call, of course. And when it comes to
| regular YT ads I don't really blame you, "the algorithm" and
| the way monetisation works encourages us to set up aggressive
| mid-roll placements etc that must be incredibly annoying if
| one doesn't pay for premium.
|
| One of the nice things about sponsor segments is that they
| don't involve YouTube, so the creator gets more benefit from
| the deal, but of course done badly (and I assume this must be
| the case with many of the generic irrelevant VPN ads for
| example) they will harm retention and thus limit reach.
|
| Your "whole video" suggestion is really "advertise smarter"
| IMO, which I completely agree with. Personally I've never
| done a "reading a 30-second script about how great product X
| is" type segment, but I have done videos where I try out
| "product X" in some way that's relevant to my audience. It's
| more product placement than direct advertising, but I guess
| even that is unpalatable to some.
| lrvick wrote:
| Even sponsor segments mean you are being biased by third
| parties, which makes it harder for you to criticize them
| later if they are no longer something you would honestly
| endorse.
|
| I did not click the video to waste time hearing about corpo
| sponsors you have been paid to shill. At most I will listen
| to information of non profit causes to donate to.
|
| Use the sponsor segments to tell users how to donate to
| you. Sponsor block categorizes these differently and leaves
| them by default.
| chankstein38 wrote:
| Just a heads up, the VPN ads are annoying sure but I think
| a lot of people would agree the RAID SHADOW LEGENDS ads are
| the worst lol
| Always42 wrote:
| "I will either block/skip ads or not use youtube"
|
| I agree. But to add, if youtube went all out and made ad
| blocking sufficiently difficult I probably would pay for it.
|
| I fixed my dryer some time back. Watching a youtube video on
| how to probably saved me multiple hours then figuring it out
| all on my own. I use it to fix cars.
| mmmlinux wrote:
| Those are called "fully integrated ads" and most of the time
| you don't see them because creators want more money for the
| whole video being an ad vs 30second of the 10 minute video.
| They also tend to involve a lot more back and forth with the
| creator and the sponsor about what is "allowed" in the video.
| PeterStuer wrote:
| Let me state upfront I do understand the desire to make money
| from a channel, and much of the YT content I enjoy would not
| exist if that was not possible. But allow me to make a few
| hopefully nuanced remarks.
|
| First of all it is not _just_ the VPNs. Briliants, RSLs etc.
| that annoy, it is _all_ sponsor reads. Even those channels that
| try to be creative with it, there 's only so many times you can
| be funny about it, and then it turns into just another piece of
| formulaic slop.
|
| But another reason why sponsor reads annoy me is that it breaks
| the youtube premium deal. I pay YT for an ad free experience.
| YT pays you more for my view than a 'free' watcher, and then
| you shove in ads anyway. Now I do get your argument that "it's
| not enough", but that does not change my end of the deal.
|
| Idealy ad reads would be autoskipped for premium subscribers.
| If that meant premium being a bit more expensive, I would be
| fine with that personally.
| noone_youknow wrote:
| > But another reason why sponsor reads annoy me is that it
| breaks the youtube premium deal.
|
| I totally get that, and I feel the same way when I see yet
| another read as a viewer and premium subscriber.
|
| I don't really have an answer (and if I did, I'd be doing it
| already), but I will say that my (subjective, based on my ad
| placement strategy and viewer profile) experience is that
| premium views are worth less than non-premium - although
| YouTube cleverly don't actually give me enough data to _know_
| that as a fact (and it would go against their stated
| position, which I guess they would never do).
| ziml77 wrote:
| Linus Sebastian has said the exact opposite of that
| whenever he's discussed the breakdown of where the money
| that Linus Media Group makes comes from. Premium views are
| worth more than free views.
| manuelmoreale wrote:
| Just a guess: maybe it depends by which vertical they're
| in? Not all channels earn the same so many be there are
| cases where non-premium users are more valuable than
| premium ones?
| kimixa wrote:
| A game streamer I sometimes watch also said something
| similar - that "youtube premium" views are tracked
| separately and worth significant multiples per view
| compared to those that get ads.
|
| They also said it isn't variable in the same way for what
| ads can get assigned to your content, or for "limited
| monetization" content (which apparently pretty much sets
| the ad income to zero).
| PeterStuer wrote:
| If I remember correctly the numbers given were 6x more
| direct payouts for a premium view vs. a free view.
| mkaic wrote:
| I wish YouTube Premium (and honestly, Spotify too!) had a
| feature where I could voluntarily commit X additional dollars
| per month to be _directly_ distributed to the creators I
| watch _according to their share of my total watchtime_ , with
| some kind of manual opt-out button for individual
| videos/creators that I explicitly do _not_ want to support. I
| am already a member of several Patreons but wish I could cast
| a bit of a wider support net for the people I watch _enough-
| to-want-to-support-them-but-not-enough-to-join-their-Patreon_
| , yknow?
| kimixa wrote:
| Is that not just youtube "memberships" though? The creator
| can choose the cost and have multiple "tiers" - I don't
| think there's anything stopping them having a $1 "tip jar"
| tier.
|
| Sure, it's not _quite_ the same, but at some point of
| similar-enough the number of people who actually use each
| feature becomes vanishingly small and /or the cost of
| managing the extra option outpaces the income, and it's
| just not worth it.
| jaderobbins1 wrote:
| Even then I've heard of some channels uploading ad-free
| versions of their videos for certain membership tiers.
| vstollen wrote:
| This somewhat reminds me on the discussions around the Web
| Monetization API [1] a few years ago.
|
| I still wish for a service that gives me access to _all_
| paywalled sites or a way to sending all websites I visit a
| little money in exchange for them not serving ads.
|
| [1]: https://webmonetization.org/
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >I could voluntarily commit X additional dollars per month
| to be directly distributed to the creators I watch
| according to their share of my total watchtime, with some
| kind of manual opt-out button for individual
| videos/creators that I explicitly do not want to support.
|
| They halfway do this. The numbers are opaque but part of
| your premium is given to creators you watch, and that cut
| is based on your watch time, among other factors.
|
| ofc I dobut we'd ever get that granular a control on CC's.
| As said in another reply, memberships are sort of that
| solution.
| joshvm wrote:
| I've mentioned this in the past but I mind sponsorship a lot
| less when it's highly relevant for the channel. For example a
| lot of engineering channels are sponsored by JLPCB who
| provided machining services or PCBs for the project video -
| that makes sense.
|
| Coffee influencers selling me NordVPN on a video about
| grinder particle size distribution does not.
| lrvick wrote:
| I actively support channels and causes by purchasing merch,
| donating, etc. That said, I refuse to waste a second of my life
| watching ads of any kind or supporting adtech. Adtech is what
| has enshittified the entire internet and we must burn it with
| fire at all costs.
|
| I use FreeTube to block all ads and sponsor segments and I
| teach everyone I know to do the same.
|
| The ad model results in creators being restricted in order to
| be advertised friendly, and encourages mass spying, of which
| the data is often irresponsibly managed and leaked putting
| people in danger.
|
| This model is fundamentally unethical to participate in from
| either side.
|
| Make some merch, and provide a mix of accessible and anonymous
| ways to donate to you.
| sorenjan wrote:
| > I do worry that if this takes off it will just result in
| those sponsors pulling their budgets for this type of
| advertising
|
| I think most advertisers track how their ads are doing by
| looking at how much the personal discount code gets used, or
| tracking links in the description. I won't ever use any of
| that, so no advertiser will ever know I didn't have to suffer
| through the ad read about their product.
| belorn wrote:
| The main area that SponsorBlock blocks are the type of sponsor
| read that typically are recorded separated from the video.
| Those are never going to be safe again blocking and it likely
| that most companies that uses that kind of services knows this.
| They are low quality, low effect, and thus (likely) fairly
| cheap.
|
| At the other end of the spectrum, we got paid content and
| sponsored gear. He who pays the piper calls the tune. It turns
| the issue to a balancing act where too much sponsored content
| will likely ruin the viewer ship (and artistic
| freedom/integrity/happiness/extra), but in turn it provide an
| income. SponsorBlock has no effect here, but naturally users
| may not click on paid content if they feel like it too much
| like an advertisement. The channel Linus Tech Tips have a few
| videos on this, and its a fairly common topic on their wan
| show.
| 542354234235 wrote:
| >Sure many of us also do patreon etc but that's never really
| sat right with me personally
|
| Patreon is people explicitly and knowingly agreeing to give you
| money in exchange for a service they want. Why does forcing
| people to watch ads preferable to that? Maybe I am
| misunderstanding what you mean when you say it doesn't sit
| right with you, because that sounds like you don't like the
| concept. I can understand if it doesn't bring in enough, but it
| is by far the most honest transaction between you and your
| viewers. Whereas with ads, you make the viewer the product and
| that doesn't sit right with me.
| ulyssys wrote:
| I think we need to rethink the whole "advertising as a way to
| support creators" model. Support comes in many forms, and
| decoupling knowledge of a thing from being paid for good work
| would likely result in higher quality outcomes.
|
| It's possible there's something to the Nostr model
| (https://nostr.com/) that could be of use here. A key part of
| Nostr is the "zap" system. In addition to allowing users to
| just merely upvote posts, users can also choose to zap a post,
| which is just a method of sending Bitcoin to the poster's
| wallet.
|
| Think of it like a tip system, as it directly and concretely
| rewards users for good content, by exchanging a token of direct
| value (money).
|
| With a system like this, advertising is something you do to get
| recognized, while the zaps are something you receive as a
| reward for valuable work (by whatever metric your audience
| appreciates).
| zamadatix wrote:
| YouTube has something a bit more direct available for
| partnered channels via the "Super Thanks" comment option. It
| allows you to tie a dollar amount to your comment on the
| video.
| roboror wrote:
| Obviously these sponsored segments are effective marketing
| otherwise no one would pay for them, but I'm sure they're far
| less effective with users who seek out tools like sponsorblock.
|
| One thing I've always wondered is do sponsors request watchtime
| data for their sponsored segments? I'm under the impression
| that they don't, which is wild to me.
| chankstein38 wrote:
| The thing that sucks is I pay for YouTube Premium to remove ads
| then youtubers always have sponsored segments. It makes my
| $20/mo useless because I'm spending time watching ads still. I
| don't have a solution I'm just stating my perspective on it.
|
| That said, SponsorBlock has been around for years. I've been
| using it for as long as I can remember. Basically any decent-
| sized channel's videos already have the sponsored segment
| skipped. I'm not sure why someone just posted it but we're well
| beyond SponsorBlock "taking off".
| Reubachi wrote:
| Same feeling here. It's gotten twice as expensive, which is
| insane by itself. But worse is the jarring rotation of
| sponsored advertisers.
|
| it's reminiscent of NASCAR. Or, like being a kid forced to
| watch advertising during TV breaks, wondering why the TV
| screen istrying to sell me cigarettes.
|
| It's maybe a bit social-media-toxic to say that some
| youtubers are my "favorite people" in that i look forward to
| their takes on the topics they cover. I lose interest though
| when that youtuber presents to me an unprompted ad for my
| testicular health.
|
| I have no solution for creators consumers or google :(
| chankstein38 wrote:
| I always wondered why YouTube themselves didn't start
| restricting sponsored segments. I don't necessarily agree
| with the idea (not a big fan of how restrictive youtube
| already is) but I always thought it was odd they were ok
| with their premium offering being devalued by sponsored
| segments.
| dnissley wrote:
| They could stop sponsored segments, but they couldn't
| stop creators and users from going to other platforms
| where they allow sponsored segments. They have far less
| control than e.g. Apple with the app store (where they
| literally can stop other app stores from ever coming into
| being, barring regulation that changes that).
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > but they couldn't stop creators and users from going to
| other platforms where they allow sponsored segments
|
| It's not like there are many viable competitors, at least
| for long form videos.
| dnissley wrote:
| If youtube stopped allowing sponsored segments that puts
| pressure on the market to produce such a thing. Even now
| creators are trying to come up with alternatives. Nothing
| has panned out, but something like stopping sponsored
| segments could very well tip a large number of people who
| want to get paid to find another way to get paid.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| So what, even despite high-profile creators such as
| Practical Engineering constantly pushing for Nebula (the
| largest of them), it's still a fraction of their YouTube
| following.
| prmoustache wrote:
| Most of the time, the complete content is a disguised AD
| anyway. Same for most hollywood movies.
| kawsper wrote:
| Someone spotted a "SKIP"-button for sponsored segments
| and posted about it on the LTT-subreddit: https://old.red
| dit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/1ekajmt/is_y...
| OnlyLys wrote:
| I have YouTube Premium and on my phone I sometimes get a
| "Jump ahead" button that pops up on the bottom right
| corner when the video is in fullscreen. It doesn't just
| appear during sponsored segments but also during "less
| exciting" moments of a video like the introduction.
| bugtodiffer wrote:
| They just give you 10% of SponsorBlock so you dont get
| SponsorBlock :D
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| People getting their own sponsors means Google doesn't
| need to increase rates to compensate creators. Who
| wouldn't take a deal for a 3rd party to pay part of your
| "employee" compensation if they were given a chance?
| Google still has plenty of sponsors going directly to
| them anyway.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Or, like being a kid forced to watch advertising during
| TV breaks, wondering why the TV screen istrying to sell me
| cigarettes.
|
| Cigarette commercials have been illegal since 1971.
| xigoi wrote:
| Good to knoW that the entire world is under a single
| jurisdiction.
| bashwizard wrote:
| r/USDefaultism
| bugtodiffer wrote:
| Wow thanks for this
| gosub100 wrote:
| > It's gotten twice as expensive, which is insane by
| itself.
|
| No. Look, I'm not _happy_ to pay more, but YT is really
| great. It 's completely obviated the need to watch
| broadcast or cable TV for me (yes I know, sports...). They
| haven't enshittified it at all, and since I'm a music
| lover, I love that they include YT music (although I sorely
| miss its predecessor). There is the sum-of-human-knowledge
| _and then some_ !! on youtube. it 's absolutely worth what
| they charge. In fact, I dont know how they can even order
| enough storage to keep the thing running. tl;dr the
| features and content has grown proportionately with the
| price increase.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >They haven't enshittified it at all
|
| really? There are entire posts dedicated to how many
| features Youtube cut removed, or messed up over the
| years. as a old school forum boomer I still hate that
| they changed from a nested comments section to "twitter
| feed of loose chains" over a decade ago.
|
| I won't go on a whole rant on every little feature, but
| the service has definitely gotten worse. It just so
| happens that the tech core still works fine enough
| (smoothly watching videos on nearly any platform), and
| the business core is powered by user-generated content
| which is as good as you choose.
|
| P.S. I sure do wish we got Youtube Premium Lite wasn't
| cancelled. I do just mostly want ad-free browsing. I can
| manage around offline/offscreen videos and no YT Music
| (also miss Google Play Music btw).
| gosub100 wrote:
| Cutting or removing features!= enshittification. To me
| that word means contracts with early cancellation fees,
| charging more for long form or educational content, pop-
| ups, rate limiting ( you get 10 vids per day on your free
| plan), charging to upload, billing authors for bandwidth
| used, and so on. I don't think you realize how good we
| have it.
| avhon1 wrote:
| Your definition slightly off. Here it is from the guy who
| coined the term:
|
| https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys
|
| > Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to
| their users; then they abuse their users to make things
| better for their business customers; finally, they abuse
| those business customers to claw back all the value for
| themselves. Then, they die.
|
| Removing features is absolutely part of enshittification.
| gosub100 wrote:
| >Then, they die.
|
| Yeah, any day now YT is going to shut its doors.
| yifanl wrote:
| You must have an incredible lack of imagination, the
| story of software is the story of mayflies.
| sdoering wrote:
| Exactly why I instantly stopped paying for Spotify. They even
| went so far as to have regular advertising before podcasts.
|
| Not paying for shit like that, only because they put a clause
| in the TOS that says ad free only means ad free music.
|
| I have no qualms using any ad blocking option available. And
| I am happily paying for creators using patreon or other means
| they provide.
| nozzlegear wrote:
| This is why I started using SponsorBlock. I've been a YouTube
| Premium subscriber since it first became available (when it
| was called YouTube Red), but I'm still inundated with long-
| form "ads" for Made In cookware and other such nonsense.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _I 'm not sure why someone just posted it but we're well
| beyond SponsorBlock "taking off"._
|
| Are we, though? Regular ad blockers are still only used by a
| minority of web browser users. I would be surprised if
| SponsorBlock has larger market share than that.
| chankstein38 wrote:
| That's fair I just mean I was recommended it by someone and
| have recommended it to others. Mostly just expressing
| people know about it and it's been around a while not
| necessarily intending to assert that it's ubiquitous.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| being around for years =/= mass awareness. Just look at
| Hacker News ;)
|
| There is no perfect solution because the interests are
| diametrically opposed. Many CC's don't WANT to be a business,
| but if you want to work full time you need to be. Businesses'
| main incentive is to get max customers or max revenue, while
| a concumer's incentive is to get as much as possible for as
| little money as possible.
|
| Ironically enough, the RAID SHADOW LEGENDS (since we're
| talking about the "usual suspects) financial model may be the
| best of both worlds, at the expense of some well off people
| (and some unfortunate addicts): have whales bankroll 80% of
| the game and subsize the free players. But that probably
| can't happen with 99.99% of video creators.
| sltkr wrote:
| You can still manually skip the sponsored segments. That's
| not the case with most ads on YouTube, so your subscription
| is not worthless.
| loongloong wrote:
| If your creators are also on Nebula ( https://nebula.tv , no
| affiliation other than being a former user) it may be worth
| considering.
|
| The various creators I used to follow on Nebula have no ads
| at all in the videos published in Nebula, compared to those
| they post on Youtube. Not sure if its applicable for all
| creators on Nebula though.
| sundarurfriend wrote:
| > That said, SponsorBlock has been around for years. I've
| been using it for as long as I can remember. Basically any
| decent-sized channel's videos already have the sponsored
| segment skipped. I'm not sure why someone just posted it but
| we're well beyond SponsorBlock "taking off".
|
| I was gonna post a similar comment but with the opposite
| conclusion: SponsorBlock has been around for years, and the
| people who are really annoyed by sponsors are mostly already
| using it. Most of the rest of the population either doesn't
| mind sponsor segments (me) or isn't willing to go to the
| trouble of installing addons. Of course, there's always going
| to be people who become aware of it due to threads like this
| and start using it, but I'd venture that that's too small a
| number for worries about this suddenly "taking off".
| chankstein38 wrote:
| I think, to some degree, this was my sentiment as well just
| not stated as clearly. I meant to say basically
| "SponsorBlock has been around and I know of a couple people
| who use it so it's taken off but hasn't caused any kind of
| revolution" but have been dealing with somethings in life
| and I think just was short with my explanation.
| sBqQu3U0wH wrote:
| Never in my life have I been interested in any sponsor
| mentioned in a YouTube video. It's sad to see creators having
| to include these humiliation rituals in their videos just to
| keep their channels alive. To me, such tools are just a noise
| filter.
| pixxel wrote:
| It is sad. Early YT was for hobbyists and those that loved to
| share.
| zamadatix wrote:
| I think this is a spot where YouTube fails to give a "fully
| valid" option as a platform. As a user right now I can have
| YouTube Premium, be a Patreon, and leave a Super Thanks on a
| video but still get served a sponsored segment. At the same
| time on the creator side I have no way to target YouTube
| Premium users or people paying directly to the channel with
| different content while keeping it as the same posting on the
| same platform (i.e. all as one video post on YouTube). As a
| result, no matter how you slice it, there is no way to have
| things be "right" even given ideal and fully willing creators
| and viewers.
|
| This leaves the only realistic way for a channel to make
| reasonable money to be via ads and sponsored segments targeting
| the majority of non paying users at the expense of the rest.
| godshatter wrote:
| >I do worry that if this takes off it will just result in those
| sponsors pulling their budgets for this type of advertising,
| and it'll be another nail in the coffin for creators.
|
| I don't think I've ever purchased a product that I have seen
| advertised by a creator on YT that I hadn't already purchased
| before seeing it in a sponsored ad. That last bit I added
| because I used to use ExpressVPN and now I'm seeing some
| sponsored ads for it.
|
| The deal has been made between the creator and the company
| already, it's been added to their video, so there should not
| need to be any noticeable affect from running sponsor block for
| people like myself who don't jump to buy advertised products
| when seeing them advertised by a creator I follow. Unless there
| is some kind of feedback that YT is giving the companies about
| who is viewing their sponsored ads, I guess, but I doubt that's
| happening. So my use of sponsor block (which I don't actually
| use - the right arrow button exists) shouldn't have any affect
| on sponsor finances that I can see.
|
| I'm not against creators making money, but I don't want to see
| ads in videos placed by YT and I don't want to see them in
| videos by creators, but I understand they would like to make
| some money. I've given through Patreon to some creators, but
| I'm not going to do that for all of the dozens of creators I
| follow. If I could just press a button and tip a small amount
| to the creator when watching a video I really liked, using a
| payment method I've already set up, I'd start doing that in a
| heartbeat. But I don't know if such an animal exists.
| null0pointer wrote:
| > Sure many of us also do patreon etc but that's never really
| sat right with me personally
|
| I'm curious what it is about the Patreon model that doesn't sit
| right with you? To me it seems like it's both the most
| respectful monetization strategy to viewers, and provides the
| creator with a much more stable income than YT ads, YTP shares,
| or sponsors.
| kelnos wrote:
| Agreed; I don't get the GP's aversion here. To me, ads --
| especially ads embedded in the regular flow of a video -- are
| one of the most disrespectful things you can do to your
| audience. Asking for voluntary subscription payments (perhaps
| with some added perks beyond what you'd get as a free viewer)
| sounds like the best model possible. People will pay if they
| find your content valuable and can afford the expense. Sure,
| there are a lot of people who will freeload, but that's just
| life. If you don't find that acceptable, then you need to put
| more of your content behind a paywall.
|
| If you can't make enough money to be satisfied with the
| Patreon model, and that makes you want to create less, maybe
| that's the correct outcome.
| heraldgeezer wrote:
| >I do worry that if this takes off
|
| It won't. Honestly, most people use the official apps on their
| phones/TVs. Desktops and laptops are in a minority now, sadlyu,
| but good for stuff like this. Some know about ublock origin,
| but that's still a small % compared to the population.
| kelnos wrote:
| I absolutely hate advertising in all forms, and will
| aggressively block ads whenever I can.
|
| I pay for YouTube Premium, though I have no idea how much (if
| any) of that goes toward creators. If a YouTube channel I enjoy
| has a Patreon, I'll subscribe.
|
| Advertising is psychological manipulation. I get that there
| aren't many ways for independent creators to get paid for their
| work, only a selection of sub-optimal choices, but ads are
| gross.
| NoahKAndrews wrote:
| I believe YT Premium supports creators better than the ads
| you would have watched would have.
| simonmysun wrote:
| I would rather expect an extension like AdNauseam[1] which
| automatically play the advertisement muted in background.
|
| [1]: https://adnauseam.io/
| StableAlkyne wrote:
| The best part about AdNauseum is it solves the criticism
| people give ad-blockers: content creators still get paid
| prmoustache wrote:
| But viewers do not owe anything to videomakers[1]
|
| [1] honestly content creator is a terrible word for what it
| is, I wish people would stop repeating that non sense.
| StableAlkyne wrote:
| I agree completely, but it's easier to build a bridge
| than it is to redirect a river.
| ivann wrote:
| But does it really work? I would expect click fraud detection
| to catch this pretty easily given how big the click fraud
| arms race is, especially since AdNauseam said their
| implementation is quite naive.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Honestly the VPNs are probably the most ethical usual suspects.
| They actually do what's advertised and the affiliate links for
| deals are decent enough. If it's so much noise that people know
| what it is already, mission accomplished.
|
| But yes, I sympathize. youtubers aren't google, and this will
| just mean sponsors will push only on the biggest youtubers,
| wheras the small-medium sized ones need the money the most
| (where sponsor blocks can be half or more of their income).
| AdamJacobMuller wrote:
| Make your sponsored segments worth watching.
|
| I watch a bunch of travel vlog channels and for the most part
| they advertise the same things (If I ever see another athletic
| greens sponsor segment or a four sigmatic ad I will scream -- I
| even actually LIKE four sigmatic products) but I have several
| channels whitelisted in SponsorBlock because the ads they do
| are hilarious.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/user/kingingit365
|
| Watch some of their videos and you will see what I mean. I was
| watching the channel for a year or more before watching a video
| while sponsorblock API was down (it's volunteer run so it
| happens sometimes) and realized I was missing out on a really
| hilarious and important part of their videos, instant
| whitelist!
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Sponsored segments always have stipulations on what you need
| to mention and how. Some may let you add some pizzazz, but
| that's why they all sound the same. Thats part of the
| contract.
|
| Even that pizzazz is risky though. Sometimes videos get
| delayed simply because the sponsor comes in last minute and
| needs to debate the segment.
| 0x0203 wrote:
| If there aren't enough people willing to pay for someone else's
| work product to make it worth the producers time/effort, then
| I'd argue that maybe that work product is not actually worth
| producing in the first place. In the realm of youtube, that may
| require putting out enough quality content as a loss-leader to
| gain a following large enough that a percentage is willing to
| support the creator directly. Many have made this work well.
|
| I have many issues with advertising in general, but put simply,
| it breaks the basic transactional nature of business. When the
| people benefiting from someone else's work product aren't the
| ones paying for it, then both the producer and consumer end up
| being taken advantage of for someone else's profit.
|
| The way I see it, tools like Patreon that allow consumers to
| directly support people they benefit from are just what are
| needed.
| throw10920 wrote:
| As a creator - I'd be very interested to know whether a direct
| microtransaction system (not crypto, imagine something like
| PayPal) would be appealing to you. (none currently exists, but
| I want there to be)
|
| Your per-video ad revenue is probably under 1c/video, right? If
| so, I don't think that many consumers would bat an eye at
| directly paying that cent (or more), assuming a sufficiently
| well-designed wallet UI (clear indicator of balance, easy
| refund system (with anti-refund-abuse countermeasures), current
| spend amount per session and spend rate prominently displayed,
| one-click content purchase with low latency, etc.). Does that
| sound plausible, or am I missing something?
| cedws wrote:
| Why are you entitled to make money from YouTube though?
| Monetisation is part of the reason the site has become a low
| quality content farm. Now it's just an industrial clickbait and
| ragebait machine. Even the educational channels just pump out
| poorly researched crap or convert Wikipedia articles to video
| format. Back in the days it was just a fun little site for
| people to upload whatever they felt like and it was great, the
| content was organic.
| nicbou wrote:
| Counterpoint: why do you feel entitled to free content?
|
| Normally if you don't agree to the price of something, you
| don't pay for it and you don't get it. With content people
| feel okay with both getting the content for free _and_
| denying the creator any income.
|
| Then when the creators dare to bring it up, there's
| invariably a comment like this downplaying their
| contribution.
|
| It's truly adding insult to injury.
| cedws wrote:
| If you hand out free cupcakes and then people take them,
| you can't really then complain about people taking the
| cupcakes without paying. The reason creators monetise their
| videos on YouTube instead of charging for them on Patreon
| is because they know people won't pay for them. Why would
| they? There are mountains of other videos they can watch
| for free and if they aren't inclined to pay, the videos
| probably aren't worth paying for.
|
| This is the free market at work. If you don't make the
| videos for free, someone else will, unless they can't
| because the production value is too high.
| nicbou wrote:
| In this case the cupcakes are not free. They are
| explicitly exchanged for a minute of your attention. You
| use scripts and tools to get the product without paying
| for it.
|
| Kind of like sneaking into a meeting room to eat the
| cupcakes, then leaving before the meeting begins.
|
| If you decided not to watch ad-supported content, it
| would be the free market at work. In this case you're
| just stiffing creators.
| account42 wrote:
| > I do worry that if this takes off it will just result in
| those sponsors pulling their budgets for this type of
| advertising, and it'll be another nail in the coffin for
| creators.
|
| For advertisers masquerading as creators. Not all creators turn
| their hobby into a hustle and not all that do use abusive
| methods to extract money out of their viewers.
|
| I do support some patreons and have also donated directly to
| projects I like but I would also be more than happy if payment
| opportunities for "creators" dried up entirely and we went back
| to an internet with more genuine content instead of crap
| designed to be profitable.
| barnabee wrote:
| > likely to kill off sponsorships as a whole, not just those
| bad ones.
|
| I'd like to see this.
|
| If creators make money it should be from YouTube handouts from
| Premium and paid subscriptions and/or creators seeking funding
| directly outside YouTube.
|
| Having less "professional" content (and less content in
| general) is a reasonable price to pay to break our dependence
| on adtech and the "attention economy".
| t0bia_s wrote:
| Freetube.io has it implemented already few years.
| delta_p_delta_x wrote:
| For anyone using an Android phone, the ReVanced[1] patches for
| the YouTube app (formerly just YouTube Vanced) applies both an
| adblock _and_ SponsorBlock, on top of various other convenience
| features. You 'll need to provide your own YouTube APK file to
| patch.
|
| I'll never go back to using non-Vanced YouTube ever again.
|
| Advertisements are a blight on this world. They are the reason
| for marketing and sales budgets being quadruple that of
| engineering and UI/UX budgets, the whole 'form before function'
| thing, and enshittification in general.
|
| [1]: https://revanced.app/patches?pkg=com.google.android.youtube
| cypherpunks01 wrote:
| Came here to say the same thing. Revanced YT patches for
| Android are extremely sweet. And yes, even better features (for
| viewers) than YT Premium.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| The only thing that moved me on from using (Re)Vanced was
| setting up my own Invidious instance, and using the Clipious
| app (F-Droid store) to access it.
|
| Clipious, by default, connects to public instances of
| Invidious, so you can try it out without having to setup your
| own instance.
|
| ReVanced remains my backup option, however.
| MaxikCZ wrote:
| Has the installation gotten easier? Last time I checked I
| needed to find a speccific version apk of youtube app itself
| that revanced patcher patches before installing. Too many steps
| to make way too often.
| delta_p_delta_x wrote:
| > Too many steps to make way too often.
|
| This is not how I feel.
|
| The last time I patched my app was several months ago, and
| it's still running fine. I do have to patch about twice a
| year and it's a five-minute affair of getting the correct
| version, going to APKMirror and downloading the corresponding
| version of YouTube, and patching it with the latest app.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| God forbid you have to expend a bit of effort every six
| months to get free entertainment and skip ads.
| precommunicator wrote:
| Unless you specifically care about app experience, you can also
| use Sponsorblock, ublock and many other extensions in plain
| Firefox on Android
| wanderingmind wrote:
| Sponsorblock is not as blunt a tool as people make it here. You
| can only block specific type of ads and you can whitelist whole
| channels which I do for some niche channels I subscribe to. In
| Android, I use Tubular [1], the NewPipe fork that integrates
| Sponsorblock and ReturnYoutube Dislike. My only additional
| request in this awesome app is if we can download the video after
| snipping out the sponsor block sections.
|
| [1] https://github.com/polymorphicshade/Tubular
| anotherhue wrote:
| yt-dlp has a sponsorblock integration that removes the segments
| from the downloaded file.
| wanderingmind wrote:
| Yes I use it in Desktop/laptops, but integrating it in
| Android through termux was a pain. I recently found out about
| [Seal](https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.junkfood.seal/)
| which seems to provide a front end for yt-dlp in Android.
| Might try this out soon.
| pxc wrote:
| I use Seal all the time when people send me links to videos
| on social media, since, lacking the apps and accounts, I
| can't reliably or conveniently get them to play at the
| present stage of enshittification of those platforms. Seal
| is great! Definitely give it a try.
| smahs wrote:
| I first found Seal which uses arai2 under the hood. After
| getting used to Seal, I had to start using yt-dlp with
| aria2 on linux as well. The only nitpick is that you can't
| get multiple parallel downloads with Seal.
| stavros wrote:
| That sounds useful, thanks! Odd that it's not on any of the
| stores (eg F-droid).
| Joe_Cool wrote:
| It is in the Izzyondroid repo: https://apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid
| /index/apk/org.polymorphicshad...
|
| I can also highly recommend the app sponsored by Louis
| Rossmann: Grayjay. It can do everything that Tubular does and
| much, much more. It also uses a plugin architecture so you
| don't have to wait for an update of the app when Youtube
| blocks it again. https://grayjay.app/
|
| It's also on the Play Store but without any plugins due to
| Google policy.
| stavros wrote:
| Thank you! I've added the repo and will look at Grayjay
| now.
| seanw444 wrote:
| I've been using NewPipe X which is very similar, but now has
| comment reply viewing, which I really value. Does Tubular have
| that now?
| aembleton wrote:
| What's comment reply viewing? Do you mean viewing the replies
| to a comment because Tubular can do that.
| aqfamnzc wrote:
| Yes, they added comment replies functionality a little while
| ago.
| KetoManx64 wrote:
| Check out https://github.com/kieraneglin/pinchflat or
| https://github.com/meeb/tubesync You have to install them on a
| server or desktop, but they can both snip out sponsored
| sections from videos.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >and you can whitelist whole channels which I do for some niche
| channels I subscribe to
|
| Honestly, these are ads that actually support the content I
| watch. So that's why I keep the adroll by default. AFAIK Google
| isn't getting any cut of it and that makes me feel good.
| torlok wrote:
| What's the point of this? Nobody's getting a cut unless you
| use the affiliate link, and it's in the description anyway.
| You're just watching your favourite creator say how much they
| love ExpressVPN through gritted teeth.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| CC's get paid for the sponsorship on top of any affiliate
| links. The RAID ads are the most obnoxious thing ever, but
| you dig through and realize even a tiny 2k sub channel can
| get a few hundred out of it (at this level you are getting
| maybe a few dozen dollars a month in YT ads) and you
| completely realize why they "sell out". I can only imagine
| the kind of cash moderate sized YouTubers (the 100-300k
| range) can get (i know a 400k YouTube disclosed half their
| revenue came from ad rolls, and their revenue was enough to
| live humbly.
|
| >You're just watching your favourite creator say how much
| they love ExpressVPN through gritted teeth.
|
| Which one of us likes every aspect of our job? Or every
| order/request of a customer? Gotta do what you gotta do.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| I don't understand this sentiment. Are you buying a product
| with a tracking code? If not, it's not supporting anyone, and
| watching a recording of a sales pitch you're not interested
| in is just wasting your time.
| godelski wrote:
| > Are you buying a product with a tracking code? If not,
| it's not supporting anyone
|
| Not all ads are equal. Most ad segments are performed with
| a direct transaction: advertiser hands YouTuber money,
| YouTuber puts ad in their content. There may be additional
| parts of the deal such as tracking codes, but that's not
| how it works.
|
| The YouTuber gets the ad money, even if the video is not
| watched. Though that does not mean you should skip the ad,
| because the videos have heatmaps and no one would advertise
| if the segment was always "cold". Though what the OP is
| saying is you can send strong signals (to both the
| advertiser AND the YouTuber) as to what ads you're willing
| to watch and not. In fact, in this way, it is a great tool
| for making a more efficient market as it increases
| information quality. But only under the assumption it is
| both pervasive and not used bluntly.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| If you're not interested in the advertisement, then
| you're creating a _less_ efficient market by signaling
| that you are. So you ought to skip past it or block it in
| that case. And if you 're not interested in any
| advertisements, the market is more efficient when you
| block them all. Or just run adnausium if you're basically
| just trying to help creators scam advertisers.
|
| Remember in all advertising funded models that you are
| always the product. The market is for "high quality"
| (i.e. profitable) viewers, not high quality videos.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Adnausium isn't making the market more efficient. It's
| wasting everyone's time and bandwidth.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| Right, I said run it if you want to help creators scam
| advertisers. That's more or less what you're going for if
| you're not interested in something, but you believe your
| "I watched the ad" signal helps the creator negotiate
| with advertisers.
| account42 wrote:
| > It's wasting everyone's time and bandwidth.
|
| No, that's what ads are doing. And not just your
| computers bandwidth but also your mental bandwidth. Fuck
| ads.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| It's reducing the advertiser's returns on their
| investments. Reduce it to zero or negatives and they will
| stop advertising. That's world changing technology.
|
| There's no bigger waste of bandwidth than ads, by the
| way. Ads are noise that's deliberately added to the
| signal just because it makes somebody somewhere money.
| These are actually the most charitable words I can use to
| describe ads.
| godelski wrote:
| You're missing a critical part: there's additional
| information we can communicate. And that's what this is
| all about, what information is being communicated. The
| inefficiency is lack of perfect information.
|
| If you indiscriminately watch or block that is a signal.
| Watch communicates potentially more because there's a
| secondary effect of some of those people buy the product.
| But by indiscriminately watching or not watching, we
| provide information about an interpolation along what was
| binary before. It is more complex to read, but now we can
| communicate that we don't dislike this add more than our
| willingness to support the channel. And on top of that,
| again our conversion rate. In a way, the discriminating
| information tells us something about the likely
| conversion rate. This is just more information, though
| that doesn't mean we are good at measuring it.
| > The market is for "high quality" (i.e. profitable)
| viewers, not high quality videos.
|
| Yes, but profits aren't the only thing people care about.
| At least not all people. Money is still a proxy for
| something more abstract.
|
| To make it clearer, there are in fact ads that I do
| enjoy. This is true for all of us because an ad is so
| vaguely defined. During a political campaign I appreciate
| some ads because I want to know the candidates positions,
| when they are debating, and so on. Too much of it pisses
| me off, but that's different.
|
| I also like ads that make me aware of certain things that
| provide utility to my life, but maybe not yours and this
| can be based on timing.
|
| So stop rejecting this and recognize that these are all
| attempts at communicating these other factors. It's
| another variable in a system of equations.
| aniviacat wrote:
| Why do you feel better about using Google's platform without
| paying (by watching ads) than about consuming someone's
| content without paying?
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I do pay so the point is moot. But for the exercise:
|
| Google has probably already well overextended it's reach
| and made thousands off data without my consent. And will
| probably make more without my consent from Gemini. They
| have so many cash glows that I couldn't care less about
| plugging one of the holes up. They've long burned their
| good will points.
|
| Meanwhile, I am an aspiring indie dev and I've overtime
| gotten rough ideas of how and what other creators on YT are
| paid. I honestly feel bad knowing some of these people
| arguably work 5 times harder than I do selling their brands
| while making maybe half (if they are a really established
| creator, maybe 500k+ subs) of what I make just walking to
| my computer and typing into a codepad. Some can barely
| afford their rent despite this hard work, and potentially
| hundred of hours of entertainment given to me. And those
| are "big" (but not Huge) creators. Someone with 50-100k
| subs may still not be able to do their work full time, or
| they do it on the very edge of viability.
|
| I can't do much. I subscribe to some crowd funds, but not
| all. being able to at least watch their ad rolls is some
| form of appreciation in my mind. So call it guilt or call
| it an odd emotional attachment.
|
| I just want to try and pay it forward, knowing I may be on
| that seat one day.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > without paying
|
| Attention is not a valid currency or payment method. Their
| service is literally free of charge. They did it that way
| _hoping_ we would look at the ads. We 're not obligated to
| do so. They have only themselves to blame for their risky
| business model that gambles on the idea that people might
| look at irrelevant content they didn't ask for.
|
| They need to charge us up front if they want us to pay. If
| they send us ads, we'll delete them before they're shown.
| Nothing they can do about it. And we won't lose a second of
| sleep over it.
| account42 wrote:
| Why not just donate to the creators you like instead of
| letting them or a third party psychologically manipulate you
| into giving money to that third party who in turn pay some
| small part of that money to fund the creator.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I try (tried) to. Money's tight now, but on the heyday of
| 2022 I was giving at least $5/month to 10 different
| creators. I'd say only 2 of those were even for a specific
| reward, 3 of then explicitly had no rewards.
|
| But I'm subbed to 30 channels and probably "watch every
| video but am not subbed" to 10-15 others. I'm not quite at
| a point where I can support everyone I want to support.
| bdw5204 wrote:
| I also use Tubular on Android. The one caveat is that Youtube
| changes seem to break the app on a regular basis so you do need
| to periodically return to the Github repo to update it.
| Always42 wrote:
| i have been using sponsor block firefox extension for some time.
| It's incredible. Youtubers I watch (LTT, marcushouse) are
| typically shilling crap like vpn or those stupid ray bud things.
|
| Youtube is not usable without adblocker and annoying without
| sponsorblock
| rchaud wrote:
| Those channels are essentially informercials with brand deals.
| Rather than skipping sponsors, I dumped them altogether. LTT
| content especially has become far more vacuous over time. It's
| as if the videos are a vessel around which to place ads.
| flutas wrote:
| Hard agree.
|
| I used to watch LMG all the time, then it felt like the
| content turned to infomercials.
|
| Then that whole drama thing went on and the fact that (in a
| leaked video) they had a manager say "you gonna get up on
| that table and dance for me" at the end of a HR meeting with
| zero reactions aside from laughing led me to fully block all
| of their channels.
|
| To me it's clear they have an internal culture problem that
| came along with the money.
| BonoboIO wrote:
| I find the LTT stupid ideas like watercooling his server
| room funny but without Sponsorblock it's a pain.
|
| Also their merch ... this is so overpriced. A screwdriver
| for 70 dollar, when nearly the same product costs 20.
|
| But there are enough people that buy that stuff.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| As far as I'm aware it's a similar price to screwdrivers
| of similar quality. Much cheaper options exist but I
| wouldn't call them "nearly the same".
| e44858 wrote:
| LTT themselves said they worked with Megapro to make a
| slightly modified version of their screwdriver. The
| original is $33.
| Hawxy wrote:
| They licensed the required patents from Megapro, but the
| internals of the screwdriver are bespoke and higher
| quality than the Megapro equivalent.
| Joe_Cool wrote:
| The same dude (Ajay) also made a "clickbait title and thumbnail
| fix": DeArrow https://dearrow.ajay.app/
|
| It's not as well known but also really great once you get used
| to it.
| jamesy0ung wrote:
| LTT is not even worth watching, it's just sponsored crap now
| disguises as a informational video
| MaxikCZ wrote:
| I really dont understand how that channel can have so many
| fans. Makes me humble in realizing I really dont know how
| people work.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| I know right? Personally, I only watch MIT lectures or
| C-SPAN highlights on YouTube. No idea how the proles can
| tolerate that slop.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| You can watch LTT without any sponsors or ads on Floatplane[0],
| you just need to pay for it.
|
| [0] https://www.floatplane.com/
| wruza wrote:
| Please if you report segments, use a correct type!
|
| I've seen enough segments to be marked as ads when they are self-
| promotion and self-promotion when they are barely promotion and
| more like further exploration info.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| It's pretty inevitable when you have stuff like this that "ads"
| devolves into "the boring parts". It's all volunteer driven and
| there's way too many videos to moderate, so it is what it is.
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _iSponsorBlockTV v2: SponsorBlock for TVs and game consoles_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37873749 - Oct 2023 (115
| comments)
|
| _SponsorBlock - Skip sponsor, filler, intro, outro, like /sub
| reminders on YouTube_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35733993 - April 2023 (4
| comments)
|
| _SponsorBlock - Skip over sponsorship segments on YouTube_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26886275 - April 2021 (174
| comments)
|
| _An open-source browser extension to auto-skip sponsored
| segments on YouTube_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21743196 - Dec 2019 (101
| comments)
|
| _Show HN: SponsorBlock - Skip sponsorship segments of YouTube
| videos_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20778926 - Aug
| 2019 (137 comments)
| nikisweeting wrote:
| For anyone that watches a lot of YouTube I also highly recommend
| the "Tweaks for YouTube" extension, it's totally transformed my
| watching experience and fixes a lot of the little nits I have
| with the facebook UI and algorithmic feeds.
|
| https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/tweaks-for-youtube/...
| heraldgeezer wrote:
| Firefox + ublock origin + this + enhancer for youtube = Youtube
| bliss :)
|
| I dont auto skip sponsors as some are actually useful but
| clicking the button works
| hnarn wrote:
| Using yt-dlp to download video files is great too because it
| has support for sponsorblock[1] which will then automatically
| remove the segments you choose from the file.
|
| [1]: https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp?tab=readme-ov-
| file#sponsorb...
| fngjdflmdflg wrote:
| One issue with SponsorBlock is that people use skip to
| highlight[0] on music, which should be illegal. To me there often
| is no highlight for music. You need to hear the first part of the
| piece in order to enjoy the second. And people have different
| views on what counts as the highlight. I don't even like seeing
| the skip to highlight color on the scrub bar in videos that are
| just music. Skip non music[1] is good though.
|
| [0] https://wiki.sponsor.ajay.app/w/Highlight
|
| [1] https://wiki.sponsor.ajay.app/w/Music:_Non-Music_Section
| Joe_Cool wrote:
| You can just turn that off in the options including the marker
| on the seek bar.
|
| Also when it is bad don't hesitate to downvote. The database is
| only that good because of user feedback (and some anti-botting
| measures). You can check hidden segments and votes here:
| https://sb.ltn.fi/
|
| And messing about with the API is made easy here:
| https://mruy.github.io/sponsorBlockControl-sveltekit/
|
| You can find this and many more things on the wiki you already
| linked.
| fngjdflmdflg wrote:
| I think that turns off the skip to highlight everywhere,
| right? I still want to see skip to highlight in non music
| videos. Also, looking at the use cases on the wiki for
| highlight, musics should not be allowed
|
| > Skipping to the point/most important part of the video
| Skipping to the part of the video referred to by the title
| Skipping to the part of the video referred to by the
| thumbnail Skipping to the part of the video referenced from a
| preview/teaser at the start of the video
|
| There is no "most important part" of a piece of music. And
| the last three don't apply at all.
| Joe_Cool wrote:
| That is planned per channel but not a priority at the
| moment: https://github.com/ajayyy/SponsorBlock/issues/435
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| When people Listen to _Giorgio by Moroder_ , but they skip the
| "boring talking part". Really shows the kind of respect today's
| people have for the pioneers. Sometimes I'll just loop the
| introduction as motivation (still has a really good beat!).
|
| But yea, reason #2 for not wanting to use SponsorBlock. I have
| niche tastes, I don't trust others to tell me what's "the bad
| parts".
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Honestly, my brain tunes out the sponsored segment. Just like it
| did for TV ads.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| I suspect if I was creating videos and putting them on YouTube,
| the best way to make SponsorBlock obsolete would be to put a
| banner on my video that lasted the duration of my video.
|
| You'd then need to create a new type of in-video adblocker that
| displayed an overlay to cover the advertisement, since you could
| no longer block it by timestamp.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| That may sadly be the next step if this does become prolific
| enough for ads to stop sponsoring individuals. A race to the
| bottom of quality against consumers who want free stuff and
| content creators who want to pay rent.
| j-bos wrote:
| Youtube premium also supports skipping past commonly skipped
| video timestamps.
| torlok wrote:
| Was looking for this exactly. I understand that you have to make
| money somehow if you want to dedicate yourself to YouTube, but I
| always found sponsor segments to be worse than native
| advertising, and just plain gross to watch.
| godelski wrote:
| > worse than native advertising
|
| While I agree with the sentiment, this point I highly disagree
| with. At least sponsor segments are (at their face)
| transparent. I'm sad that there's many disingenuous products
| and misinformation in these segments, but at least you know it
| is an ad. On the other hand, native advertising has all those
| same bad things _but_ additionally tries to deceive you into
| believing it isn 't an ad.
|
| Analogously, I'd be upset if someone handed me a glass of piss
| when I asked for something to drink. But at least I can
| recognize it and turn it down. On the other hand, if you hand
| me a glass of piss and actively take efforts to make it look,
| taste, and appear like water, al while telling me it is water,
| sure, I probably won't be upset because I don't know. But dear
| god... if I find out... Well, I don't think there are many
| reasons that someone should be punched in the face, but that
| doesn't mean there are zero reasons to...
|
| Deception is so much worse.
|
| Btw: check out ReVanced[0]. You can rebuild the YouTube APK
| (and others) to integrate adblock and sponsor block. All
| optional too! Unlike pihole, it'll actually achieve that.
|
| [0] https://revanced.app/
| lolinder wrote:
| > worse than native advertising
|
| Hard disagree. Sponsored segments are better in a few ways:
|
| * They're a return to the days where ads didn't need to be
| targeted at people but instead were targeted at content. "If
| you're watching this educational video you might like
| Brilliant" is a heck of a lot less intrusive than "I noticed
| you were searching for shoes the other day, so here's a Nike
| ad".
|
| * The creator has to own it. There's no hiding behind the
| algorithm or Google or whatever, they have to actually read off
| the advertisement. I find the human in the loop serves as a
| valuable filter on what gets advertised (at least on the
| channels I follow).
|
| * The best creators actually make the ad worth watching. See
| Terrible Writing Advice for an example. I don't always watch
| the ad, but I sometimes do because it's just fun.
|
| In general I agree that ads are bad in all their forms, but
| sponsor reads are one of the least offensive items in a bad
| genre.
| bigger_cheese wrote:
| I presume native advertising on youtube has more strict
| vetting (i.e. needs to comply with advertising regulations
| unlikely to be out and out scam etc) then creator sponsored
| content.
|
| Some sponsored content seems like borderline scams to me I
| see a lot of creators shilling for stuff like "not a bank"
| banking apps etc.
| torlok wrote:
| > I noticed you were searching for shoes the other day, so
| here's a Nike ad
|
| That's not native advertising. Native advertising is when you
| write an article about a subject just to shill a product.
|
| On YouTube it's somebody saying they've been using Ground
| News to do research for the video, or that security it's
| important, then transitioning to a NordVPN ad. You're looking
| up to somebody for information, but then they turn into a
| psychopath for 2 minutes to push vitamin supplements when
| they damn well know you can just eat better instead.
| alkonaut wrote:
| > "If you're watching this educational video you might like
| Brilliant"
|
| I think there is a nuance. If there is a video that does this
| for 5 seconds in a 15 minute video, to sell a product they
| really know and like, and that is strongly related to the
| content, then sure.
|
| But shilling random products? perhaps even "crap products"
| (you know exactly which ones: gambling, crypto-related, low
| quality SaaS...) and doing it for more than a tiny mention?
| This is basically the reinvention of ad funded TV, only the
| productions are crap in comparison and the regulation is non
| existent. So in that case, sorry, I'm happy to both watch
| your content with skipped ads, enjoy the content, _and_ see
| your content disappear because your monetization fails.
| swfsql wrote:
| I wish there existed something like this for arbitrary videos
| such as for movies..
| anotherhue wrote:
| Kinda https://runpee.com/
| OldMatey wrote:
| Is there an equivalent that anyone knows about for Podcasts?
| dailykoder wrote:
| I don't mind when youtubers have their own in-video ads tbh. Yes,
| a lot of them are often advertising really stupid shit (because
| it prolly gives the most money), but at least on most videos it
| doesn't break the flow as heavy as the normal youtube ads and it
| ain't as annoying. So I'd give them these few seconds of
| brainwashing me to deliver content that I like. That's fine.
|
| I just stopped viewing people that use too many ads. Simple as
| that
| 8note wrote:
| Bdouble0100's are as entertaining as the rest of the video.
| Still screws with the flow, but worth skipping then going back
| to watch after
| Timber-6539 wrote:
| Your content creators were always going to increase
| monetization strategies, whether you gave them the nod or not.
| That's the beauty of capitalism hard at work.
|
| I personally couldn't use YouTube without Sponsorblock as a
| matter of principle, I hate ads. Doesn't matter how many times
| you try to categorize and dress them up.
| ok_dad wrote:
| What's the alternative to ads? I pay for YouTube premium, and
| I just mute the sponsor segment ads in videos. I get good
| information and entertainment from those video creators, so I
| would like them to get paid to continue doing it.
| Iulioh wrote:
| Just to make you aware, they added pseudo SponsorBlock on
| TY Premium.
|
| If you "skip" 10 seconds on a sponsored segment a "skip to
| next part button" will appear on screen to the end of the
| sponsored segment (it does not use chapters and it does not
| appear 100% of times)
| dailykoder wrote:
| Yes, the alternative to ads is paying. As someone mentioned
| in this thread: It's kinda shit that these sponsored
| segments don't get skipped automatically if you pay for
| premium.
|
| I am too greedy to pay for premium tbh and as long as
| ublock works with the normal ads, I'm fine. If it stops
| working one day, I'll probably rather stop using youtube
| instead of paying for premium
| jeffhuys wrote:
| The sponsors don't pay less if you skip the segment. They
| won't know.
| ok_dad wrote:
| There's some data available for this in the YouTube
| dashboard, actually.
| wzdd wrote:
| Some alternatives include merchandise, sponsorships
| (Patreon etc), tipping, and organic engagement / sharing so
| that more people can find them and give them money.
| armada651 wrote:
| > Your content creators were always going to increase
| monetization strategies, whether you gave them the nod or
| not. That's the beauty of capitalism hard at work.
|
| And he can choose which content creators he watches based on
| how obtrusive their monetization strategies are, that is also
| very much part of capitalism.
| Timber-6539 wrote:
| I'd argue choosing to watch for free content that cost
| money to produce is the opposite of capitalism.
| armada651 wrote:
| I wasn't arguing in favor of SponsorBlock, I was stating
| that you have to option to not watch the content at all
| if the sponsorship is so annoying you'd consider
| installing something like SponsorBlock.
| strogonoff wrote:
| When content creator chooses and delivers ads (like the
| sponsored blocks on YouTube), as opposed to a network (like
| Google ads), it is actually worthwhile to me because 1) what
| they promote _can_ be useful (since I subscribe to this channel
| in particular), 2) it is not fueled by a creepy shadow profile
| of me, 3) even if it is not useful, what they choose to promote
| (and how they do it) reveals something about them
| (scrupulousness, greed, creativity, what they think of me the
| viewer).
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| > what they choose to promote (and how they do it) reveals
| something about them
|
| maybe the YTers you watch are different, but that's not the
| case for me at all. Barely anyone promotes things which
| relates to their channel in the videos i watch. Hello Fresh,
| Manscaped, Squarespace, RAID: Shadow Legends, World of Tanks
| are the sponsor segments i mostly see, none of them relate to
| the video which they're in.
|
| honorable exception is Miniminuteman who sometimes sells
| handmade jewellery made by a different creator and the
| jewellery even relates to the content of the videos.
| strogonoff wrote:
| Among the channels or podcasts I follow that do sponsored
| blocks, some occasionally promote interesting services I
| haven't heard about before, some (well, let's be frank,
| there's probably only one in the world that really hits it
| home: Map Men) can do even the most basic generic VPNs in a
| manner that can be equally or more entertaining than the
| rest of the video, making one literally wait to see the
| entire ad (even when it is at the very end), some do big
| but informative sponsored sections where the presenter
| interviews the business.
| dtx1 wrote:
| Firefox, UBlock, Sponsorblock. Only way to tube
| ddtaylor wrote:
| I have been using it since beta and it's always awesome.
| voidUpdate wrote:
| I still don't understand a lot of youtube advertising. Like for
| me, if I'm being advertised something, I instinctively don't
| trust it, because they're having to pay people to say good things
| about it rather than people who have used it telling me it's a
| good thing. And there are still so many sponsorships from places
| like BetterHelp, which has been known to be a scam for a while
| now, and Raid Shadow Legends, which is just a crappy mobile game
| that is about as "mobile game" as you can get. The only reason I
| use onshape is because a friend recommended it to me, and I was
| very skeptical about it initially
| freetonik wrote:
| I feel the same. The more I hear about a brand in youtube ads
| (or any ads, for that matter), the more "scammy" feeling I get
| about it. At this point I feel I won't even consider looking
| into NordVPN, Betterhelp, or SquareSpace, even though I
| understand how this feeling is unjustified.
| bugtodiffer wrote:
| > I understand how this feeling is unjustified
|
| Every company you listed is bad.
|
| NordVPN wasn't caught yet, but it's to good to be true and
| ALWAYS having 73% off is illegal marketing.
|
| Betterhelp sold data to facebook to retarget you with ads.
|
| SquareSpace had a security issue were entering the email of
| an old, not yet migrated account, was instant account
| takeover... how does this slip through security reviews?
|
| Everything that needs my favorite minecraft youtuber to
| advertise it, is scam. It wouldn't sell without influencer
| marketing.
| voidUpdate wrote:
| The thing about nordVPN (and VPN services in general) is
| they always talk about how funneling all your traffic
| through them makes it more secure and it means that
| governments cant spy on you and whatever. But sending all
| your traffic through a single point of failure seems like a
| bad idea from a government protection view, and how is it
| any more secure than https? The only thing that I've seen
| it be good for is making it look like you're from somewhere
| else to watch different stuff on streaming services. I
| think Tom Scott put it well here
| https://youtu.be/WVDQEoe6ZWY
| iamacyborg wrote:
| The same can be said for folks using Clouflare or Google
| DNS.
| wzdd wrote:
| > how is it any more secure than https?
|
| Using a VPN doesn't expose the domain names you're
| viewing (via SNI) or the IP addresses you're connecting
| to to your ISP. It also (therefore) doesn't expose to the
| ISP the volume of traffic you're sending to a particular
| site, when you connect to it, or how long you stay there.
|
| Whether your ISP is part of the threat model you're
| interested in mitigating is up to you personally, but
| this is how, depending on that model, a VPN can be more
| secure than HTTPS.
| voidUpdate wrote:
| Instead it exposes them all to the VPN company instead.
| You've just moved the attack point to another company
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Most of what people use personal VPNs for is to break
| some rules, sometimes the law. Circumventing geofencing
| or content blocking is most likely against some terms of
| service. VPN services can't really advertise for this, so
| they talk about evil hackers.
| schoen wrote:
| I saw a couple of VPN promos recently where the sponsored
| YouTube presenter talked about geoblocking circumvention
| as an important VPN use case. I don't know whether the
| sponsor thought that was desirable or not (and also don't
| know whether the sponsor requested it or not).
| Majestic121 wrote:
| My take on NordVPN is that it's surely some kind of
| honeypot, to catch extremely illegal uses (pedos, drugs),
| or high value targets (journalists, politics ?). Not sure
| who's running it.
|
| But if you're using it for mildly illegal things like
| having the Netflix catalogue from another place it's
| probably good enough.
|
| Just don't install their app, configure it yourself,
| don't use it full time, and don't expect protection from
| anything other than low level law enforcement from your
| country. Expect your connection to be monitored when
| you're using it, as much as can be (so not breaking
| encryption, but all the rest for sure).
|
| I have absolutely no evidence whatsoever other than the
| fact that it's been a high visibility service for very
| long, which makes me think it would have already been
| taken down a while ago if it was actually effective at
| protecting high value targets
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| But people are usually funnelling all their traffic
| through a single point of failure anyway: Their ISP. If
| your ISP is known to be bad, then it could be better to
| choose a good VPN service.
| voidUpdate wrote:
| And you'd better hope its a good VPN service since now
| you're sending all your traffic through that single point
| instead
| Iulioh wrote:
| The hardest thing about selling something is making people
| aware or it's existence. So it's not really a bad bad thing.
|
| Said that, if i see that thing everywhere i can probably find a
| cheaper thing with the same quality because the marketing
| budget must be HUGE and these 10% discount codes give 10% to
| you and 10%the the creator so i can find a code 20% somewhere.
| dkarras wrote:
| you're not the target. advertisements work. the people managing
| ads are very meticulous about their spend vs. return. if you
| are seeing an ad of something for any noticeable duration of
| time, that means it works. by that I mean they get positive
| return from showing the world their ad. if it generates
| negative returns, it will be pulled pretty quickly. they are
| humans just like you and me, we don't like losing money.
|
| also one should always be skeptical about the extent they
| believe they are not influenced by ads. that runs pretty deep.
| you say you instinctively don't trust it. but when the time
| comes to buy something, you won't automatically steer yourself
| towards a product that you have never heard before just because
| you have not seen an ad for it. having some names in your mind,
| even them showing up when you do research creates influence.
| fhd2 wrote:
| From my ad industry insights, that's only partly true. What
| you mentioned last is called brand advertising IIRC, which is
| not conversion oriented, but aimed at exposing you to a brand
| (like, a car manufacturer) so that at some point _later_ in
| your life, you contribute to a decision to buy from them.
|
| Now, huge companies do run focus groups and such to ensure
| their brand advertising has the right (psychological)
| effects. But it is inherently difficult to measure. And I've
| seen many mid-sized companies not do that at all, they run
| these ads based on what they believe might work.
|
| Mind you, this is experience from 4 years ago, but I did find
| the ad industry, as obsessed with tracking as it is, to be
| surprisingly gut-driven. For a lot of it, it's hard to tell
| if it works.
|
| I do fully agree that for people who know what they're doing,
| advertising absolutely works, in ways that are sometimes
| unintuitive to consumers.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| > From my ad industry insights, that's only partly true.
| What you mentioned last is called brand advertising IIRC,
| which is not conversion oriented, but aimed at exposing you
| to a brand (like, a car manufacturer) so that at some point
| _later_ in your life, you contribute to a decision to buy
| from them.
|
| Top of funnel advertising is definitely conversion
| oriented, just on a longer timescale.
| fhd2 wrote:
| Fair, conversions are the ultimate goal. What I meant by
| conversion-oriented (possibly not the correct term) is
| ads where you measure their success based on sales,
| signups etc, as opposed to focusing on the number of
| impressions (views).
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > if you are seeing an ad of something for any noticeable
| duration of time, that means it works
|
| It means my uBlock Origin failed. I will not be returning to
| that site as a result.
| HenryBemis wrote:
| You can always 'enter element picker mode'. With a little
| practice/knowledge you can block that element/frame/etc.
| forever. And/or add a layer with Privacy Badger and block
| altogether most of the sus domains.
|
| Another 'trick' I employ (always with Firefox) is that I
| open links not to a "New Tab", but instead I use "Open in
| Reader View" add-on, so I "Open in Reader View" (it does
| exactly what it says on the tin), so I only get the clean
| text and the relevant images. That works for almost every
| website.
| saul-paterson wrote:
| You should go and report that to whoever maintains your
| block list. The information on where to report ads is at
| the top of the file, and you can find the file itself in
| ublock origin's settings. Better yet, create a rule and
| submit it along with the issue, although people who
| maintain lists for long periods of time tend to be much
| better at it and might not find your attempt useful. I do
| it anyway to show some respect, they deserve it.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Good tip, I'll try and do that in the future.
|
| Is there a best practice for developing rules that match
| randomized class names? There's a web app I use daily at
| work with obnoxious upselling banners that always come
| back if the page is refreshed and it's the only place
| I've run into this annoyance so far.
| dgb23 wrote:
| Advertisement obviously works. But the premise or mechanism
| is not as clean and simple as you laid out.
|
| Marketing, whether they are external firms or internal teams,
| have their own incentives, just like anyone else.
|
| But... Personally I like good marketing and I'm drawn to
| services and products who do so.
|
| For example tech and games sometimes do very good marketing
| by providing educational resources, transparency through
| blogs/vlogs etc.
|
| Some products are focused on a high quality, sustainable
| niche, and they do very pronounced, sometimes humorous over
| the top ads.
|
| I ,,mistrust" marketing if it wants to sell cheap crap in a
| disingenuous way. But I'm glad to see ads for interesting,
| quality products.
| lupusreal wrote:
| I only worked in ad tech briefly and many years ago, but what
| I saw there was a game being played between the people who
| make/distribute ads and the companies that buy them. The game
| is to convince the people buying ads that ads have value,
| even when they don't.
| riiii wrote:
| That rings with what Uber said, that they'd been scammed
| $100 million.
|
| https://veracitytrustnetwork.com/blog/digital-
| marketing/uber...
| Sander_Marechal wrote:
| I am convinced that the bulk of online advertising money
| spent is just wasted. All it does is steal clicks and
| attributions for conversions that would have happened
| _anyway_.
| riiii wrote:
| I've been on the internet since before it was all about
| ads and clocks.
|
| I've never intentionally clicked on an ad. It's either
| been an accidental drive by click or deception.
| saul-paterson wrote:
| It's not wasted, it pays for the two out of three major
| web browsers we currently have, along with Go and many
| other things.
| tormeh wrote:
| They are very much not meticulous about ROI. The thing to
| understand about the ad industry is that it's incredibly
| adversarial. Companies need ads to raise brand awareness and
| make people aware of new products. So far, so well-aligned.
| From there on it goes downwards. A company's marketing
| department is in an adversarial relationship with the rest of
| the company, aiming to increase the ad budget at all costs.
| The ad agency often just gets a pot of money from the
| department, and instructions to spend it all, no matter how
| unproductive. Because if the marketing department doesn't
| spend their budget, it might shrink. ROI is often not a
| consideration at all. And if the marketing department
| actually do care about ROI, then the ad agency certainly
| doesn't. Then you have the websites themselves, with their
| clickfarms and general fraud, and the ad exchanges that
| empower them.
|
| The whole business is teeming with waste and fraud, but it's
| a necessary evil so it stays.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| This is the same myths that everyone in advertising
| propagates.
|
| Such a belief purports that the effect of all advertising is
| measurable. It clearly is not. For example, someone sees your
| ad and decides your company is reprehensible. They were not a
| customer and they decide to never interact with your company.
| It's not possible to measure this. Anyone claiming it is
| holds what amounts to a religious belief.
|
| The "generates negative returns" is the next myth in this.
| Whether or not advertising generates positive returns is not
| relevant. You can't measure the return of advertising in the
| first place. Even if you could measure it, you should be
| comparing it to the opportunity cost of not doing something
| more productive with that money. Which you also can't
| measure. No one rationally proposes that someone spends a
| hundred dollars on advertising to generate $100.10 in revenue
| is somehow a good use of money.
| progforlyfe wrote:
| pretty sure YouTube ads are directly trackable though -- if
| someone clicks it and funnels through to a checkout process
| and pays, they have a direct report of how much they spent
| on the ad versus how much they made directly from that ad.
|
| YouTube in-video sponsorships are a different beast
| admittedly; however there is still some basic tracking
| through use of promo codes (Use code JOHN15 for 15% off).
| They can see a report of how much they spent on ads that
| mention JOHN15 and how many sales included that promo code
| -- if sales vs ad spend are significantly positive, it
| becomes simple math to determine how much more to spend on
| ads, or to discontinue them.
|
| I suppose your point though was that it's not possible to
| track the negative sentiment generated by the ads (people
| who get annoyed and decide to avoid your company at all
| costs). That is true, but companies who rather go down the
| path of something trackable than an unknown shot in the
| dark.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| You're spot on with "go down the path of something
| trackable". The next step is they assume everything they
| tracked represents all data for all possible outcomes. It
| can't.
| blargey wrote:
| > For example, someone sees your ad and decides your
| company is reprehensible. They were not a customer and they
| decide to never interact with your company.
|
| I can't immediately come up with a scenario in which all of
| the following is true:
|
| 1) The ad-viewer is repulsed by the ad
|
| 2) The ad is repulsive for reasons unrelated to your
| product/company's actual characteristics (otherwise they
| weren't a potential customer anyway)
|
| 3) This accounts for a significant portion of ad viewership
| (otherwise it's not relevant)
|
| 4) There is no social/media backlash (that would make the
| issue visible)
|
| 5) There is a significant positive ROI anyway (that's the
| only motive to continue that advertising campaign, which is
| required to sustain both negative and positive effects of
| the ad)
| hightrix wrote:
| Is not the modern internet and widespread usage of ad
| blockers that exact scenario?
|
| Take a person that hates being advertised at, a persona
| that is growing. This person meets all of your criteria.
| Multiply this person across the internet.
|
| When this person sees an ad, regardless of company or
| content, they are repulsed because they hate ads. This
| person likely runs an adblocker so when an ad gets
| through, they are even more angry. If this person sees
| this product in the store, they will avoid it.
|
| Take a common example of Coca-Cola. Their ads are
| everywhere. This person would instead buy the store brand
| cola even though it has not been advertised at them.
| nj5rq wrote:
| > Such a belief purports that the effect of all advertising
| is measurable. It clearly is not. For example, someone sees
| your ad and decides your company is reprehensible. They
| were not a customer and they decide to never interact with
| your company. It's not possible to measure this. Anyone
| claiming it is holds what amounts to a religious belief.
|
| What on earth? You obviously haven't worked on anything
| related to sales. It's clearly measurable: An advertisement
| is shown one day on TV, for example, the sales the next day
| are higher. That's the case 99% of the time. You can say
| it's not, and you can call that "religious belief", if you
| want to.
|
| Companies use ads because they work, obviously. Everybody
| thinks they are somehow "immune" to advertisements because
| they are "smarter than the rest", but the sale statistics
| are plain and simple.
| autoexec wrote:
| > Everybody thinks they are somehow "immune" to
| advertisements because they are "smarter than the rest",
| but the sale statistics are plain and simple.
|
| My guess is that those people are the most susceptible to
| their influence. Even when you know the tricks being
| employed to manipulate you, it doesn't always make the
| manipulation less effective. It's like an optical
| illusion where you know what you're seeing is wrong, but
| you still can't stop seeing it.
|
| It's the same with people who don't care about their
| privacy because "no one cares about what I do" without
| realizing that companies wouldn't be spending massive
| amounts of time and money collecting, storing, and
| analyzing every intimate detail of our lives that they
| can get their hands on if it wasn't making them money
| hand over fist at our expense.
|
| Ads are not about education or product awareness.
| Everyone already knows what Coca-Cola is, but they still
| spend 4 billion a year in advertising. They wouldn't be
| doing that if they weren't reasonably sure that it was
| paying off for them. As surveillance capitalism continues
| to creep deeper into our lives companies are getting
| better and better at being able to track the success of
| their advertising and what they've been seeing so far
| hasn't caused them to scale back their efforts at
| manipulating us. It's just making them better at it.
| richardreeze wrote:
| It's as simple as "if ads didn't work, YouTube, Facebook,
| Google, et al wouldn't exist"
| drdaeman wrote:
| If ads would have actually worked as preached by the
| industry, ad blockers wouldn't exist. ;)
|
| But it's Google's and Facebook's best interest to make
| people believe that they do, no matter the reality.
|
| What they actually do is increase sales by some
| measurable margin (not always great, but not zero
| either), while causing all sorts of negative effects
| (spam, scam, misinformation, all those "influencers" and
| "engagement" farming causing mental fatigue) that are
| just waived away and/or swiped under the rug of ignorance
| by the industry adepts.
|
| Scroll back ten years - even back then Google and
| Facebook made people believe in a literal myth that
| they're so Big Data they know people better than they do
| themselves (I kid you not, I heard this cliche way too
| many times), when in fact their best systems had
| extremely limited knowledge of both the audience (like
| very basic demographics that are not even always
| accurate) and advertised products (a few pieces of
| metadata at best). Heck, even modern LLMs have limited
| awareness so they struggle to make sensible
| recommendations a lot of time (and are extremely
| expensive for use in advertising at scale) and I'm
| talking about orders of magnitude simpler "targeting"
| systems back then.
|
| Advertisement industry literally preaches advertisement,
| because their very well-being (aka market valuation)
| depends on it. I'm (a nobody internet weirdo) hold an
| opinion that it harms society more than it does it good
| by boosting the economy.
| nj5rq wrote:
| > you won't automatically steer yourself towards a product
| that you have never heard before just because you have not
| seen an ad for it. having some names in your mind, even them
| showing up when you do research creates influence
|
| This is 100% percent true. I thought about exactly this, and
| it's the first time I hear someone say it, I am glad. I try
| to keep away from advertisements, but it's just not really
| possible, you get influenced by even what your friends or
| family say.
| maccard wrote:
| I think you'd be surprised at how effective advertising is on
| you. An awful lot of it is brand familiarity. You mentioned
| some examples, but presumably you've seen more than three ads
| (not expecting you to list them).
|
| Square space is one provider that commonly does these kinds of
| placements and I can confirm that it's an excellent product
| (albeit expensive).
|
| Where do you think your friend found out about onshape?
| voidUpdate wrote:
| Sure, it makes me aware of brands, and then I don't use their
| service because they have to pay people to say it's good. And
| I already have a web hosting solution, its the raspberry pi
| in my closet.
|
| I've asked them but they may be asleep
| matsemann wrote:
| Ehh, if you go to buy a new car, will you buy a brand
| you've never heard of before? Or will you perhaps check out
| the brand you've seen ads for a hundred times in your life?
|
| It's not a conscious decision, your mind is familiar with
| some of the brands more than others, for whatever reason,
| and that tricks you into trust. Sure, you still might look
| into reviews and stuff, but your mind has already been
| primed to some extent in what brands you even consider.
| voidUpdate wrote:
| If I go to buy a new car, I'll look at the brands I have
| experience with, like what my friends and family drive.
| If I can actually see what its like and have people I
| trust endorse it, I'm more likely to support it
| matsemann wrote:
| And people subconsciously trust people they interact with
| often, like content creators whose videos you watch. Most
| people think they're above being influenced by ads, but
| they're not.
| voidUpdate wrote:
| I barely interact with content creators. They don't reply
| to my comments very much, and even if they did, they'd
| still say they 100% support the thing they're being paid
| to say nice things about. I cant have a genuine
| conversation with them about the thing, how good it is,
| what the downsides are etc. See Kyle hill's vaguely
| recent video about scientific misconduct where they also
| advertise BetterHelp. The comments section was
| overwhelmingly negative about it, and their response was
| essentially "cry about it."
| saul-paterson wrote:
| I prefer smaller channels (because they feel more "human"
| if you know what I mean), and their authors spend a lot
| of time engaging with the audience. Discussion is
| actually useful, you can learn something from YouTube
| comments. Yes, that YouTube.
|
| Just step outside the highly commercialized part and
| you'll be surprised.
| barnabee wrote:
| > Most people think they're above being influenced by
| ads, but they're not.
|
| Exactly why they should be illegal!
|
| Allowing people to spend money manipulating us into
| giving them money so they can spend more manipulating us
| into... is mad.
| euroderf wrote:
| > An awful lot of it is brand familiarity.
|
| Thus the ad industry term "impressions" ? One gets the
| impression (heh) that they're just trying to beat logos and
| catchphrases into your reptile brain.
|
| "Familiarity breeds contempt"... but ubiquitous
| superficiality does not, I guess.
| maccard wrote:
| I've never realised the use of the word impression until
| now - makes a lot of sense
| madaxe_again wrote:
| This makes you an outlier - and HN is the kind of place where
| you will find many such outliers.
|
| The majority of people, however, are extremely responsive to
| advertising & marketing, or it would not exist.
|
| My business used to be ecommerce platform development and
| consultancy, and I ended up seeing a lot of how the sausage is
| made - advertising is a bigger spend than product for most
| successful retailers, and it's all about figuring out where to
| chop off the tail. You've got your core 15% who you can send an
| email to saying "buy this", and they will, 95% of the time -
| then segments step down in terms of convertibility until you're
| down to 0.01%, at which point you're usually going to get more
| people irritated by the marketing than you will sales.
|
| The marginal cost of most marketing is very low - that's to
| say, to reach 10,000,000 eyeballs doesn't cost much more than
| to reach 10,000 - unless you're doing paper catalogues, which
| is a whole other thing, most of your cost is up front, artwork,
| direction, whatever - so it makes sense to shoot for a bigger
| basket and get some bycatch.
|
| Me - I resolutely refused to do any marketing for our business.
| Mistake, bluntly, as I let my emotions get in the way of
| rationality. Had anyone other than a clique of medium-large UK
| merchants ever heard of us, the business might have gone
| somewhere - instead after a decade we were trundling along in a
| comfortable rut and I ejected.
|
| So, you hate it, I hate it, it's misleading, it's annoying,
| it's a negative signal to us - but _it works on most people_.
| wzdd wrote:
| > The majority of people, however, are extremely responsive
| to advertising & marketing, or it would not exist.
|
| This doesn't follow. Plenty of things are not effective for
| what they're claimed to do but still exist, have active
| communities of supporters, make lots of money for their
| practitioners, are a large part of popular culture, etc etc.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| I don't trust them either. The inherent conflicts of interest
| makes any advertising suspicious. They are guaranteed to be
| overstating the pros and understating the cons.
|
| "Sponsored segments" on youtube are nothing but normal
| advertising, they just permanently hardcoded the ads into the
| video instead. I don't like that they use the word "sponsors"
| for that. Sponsorships can be an ethical way to make money.
| Think Patreon, GitHub Sponsors.
| schoen wrote:
| It might be a noncentral example of sponsorship, but it's
| been a traditional usage since the early days of television:
| "and now, a word from our sponsor".
|
| Edit: actually, I think that phrasing arose in the early days
| of radio!
| ctm92 wrote:
| It's to get people to remember the name.
|
| What first comes to your mind when you are in need of a website
| builder? Squarespace. Want to make some PCBs? JLCPCB
| voidUpdate wrote:
| apache2/html/css, and I'm a little sceptical about
| pcbway/jlcpcb because the shipping times are nuts. I know its
| because they're coming from china but it makes me want to
| etch my own PCBs instead
|
| I now sort of want to see a video about PCB etching sponsored
| by either of those because it would make me laugh from the
| contradiction
| cruffle_duffle wrote:
| The next project I build I want to try one of these
| services. The idea of a one-off PCB is pretty cool.
| cruffle_duffle wrote:
| My YouTube echo chamber directs me to pcbway. JLCPCB is
| clearly targeting a lower quality YouTube audience as I only
| watch sophisticated content creators whose stunning intellect
| make me feel comfortable in the products they endorse. I
| suggest you avoid JLCPCB on these grounds alone.
|
| /s... at least I think :-)
| Ekaros wrote:
| I am starting to think that these companies aim for saturation
| of mindshare. Like Coca-Cola, Pepsi and such. This bombarding
| is there for you to remember the name of the company. And then
| when you are ready to purchase either go for it or try to find
| some sponsored segment again for that discount. Individual
| conversions are less important than the long term mindshare.
| cqqxo4zV46cp wrote:
| The easiest people to advertise to are HN knowitalls that
| consider themselves infallible, completely logical beings.
|
| Advertising works on you. You're just, at best, describing a
| scenario where you aren't being advertised things that you
| currently find appealing.
|
| You're currently on a social network that's basically just YC's
| advertising board.
| lupusreal wrote:
| That's a quippy response I've heard here before, but it
| doesn't check out. You, without any knowledge of my personal
| experience, are asserting that everything I know about my
| experience is wrong and I am deceiving myself by thinking I
| know anything about myself. But in truth, this is nothing
| more than your attempt to deceive me, plain and simple gas-
| lighting.
|
| > _You're currently on a social network that's basically just
| YC's advertising board._
|
| If that's the sum of your proof, your thesis is a joke. I am
| not the customer of any YC company, nor have I ever applied
| for a job at one, nor have I ever or will I ever apply to YC
| itself. Your attempt to cold read me was pathetic.
| joseda-hg wrote:
| Advertising being so lucrative and Implicit endorsement being
| what it is (plus opportunity cost) means that any public person
| recommendation might as well be treated as advertisement, so
| you may only trust the advice of those you know directly
|
| That's probably for the better, but it also means that you'll
| have blindsposts
| theshrike79 wrote:
| Influencer marketing works so well on the younger generations
| that it's scary.
|
| Just look at Prime. It's just a generic crappy sports drink and
| kids were literally paying 10-15EUR/bottle for it during the
| worst hype times because supplies were so short.
| richardreeze wrote:
| I hear you, but I still bought those Feastable chocolate
| bars...
| maccard wrote:
| I think this is inevitable, but I'm also disappointed. I run an
| adblocker because deep tracking is invasive, consent can't freely
| be given for every website, a significantly detracted user
| experience from relayouts while reading, huge performance costs,
| and bandwidth usage.
|
| We're seeing here on this thread that it is in fact that people
| just don't want ads. These content creators need to be paid
| somehow.
| bugtodiffer wrote:
| I can not live without this.
|
| Even if I am on a device with premium, I still need to use like 3
| different blockers/extensions to get YouTube to a state were it
| is usable.
| surfingdino wrote:
| I like the technical side of such projects, because I'm a dev. I
| am also a creator and I am always conflicted when see such tools,
| because it does affect the bottom line of other creators.
| welferkj wrote:
| I hate the very idea of "content creation" for its own sake, so
| this is perfect. Youtube was a million times better when it was
| people uploading quirky and informative videos about stuff they
| actually cared about, as opposed to soullessly shilling
| "content" dominating the recommendations no matter how much you
| try to convince the algorithm you aren't interested.
| alkonaut wrote:
| A hundred times this. I'd go so far as saying I'd trade the
| 2024 media landscape for the 2014 one in a heartbeat. And
| honestly, I'd also trade that one for the 1994 media
| landscape. "Content creators" are the worst thing to happen
| to media in 50 years.
| seanvelasco wrote:
| i've gotten used to having no ads thanks to Firefox with uBlock
| Origin and SponsorBlock that it became painful when i try to
| browse the web on others' computers
|
| SponsorBlock is a godsend when watching Linus Tech Tips where it
| feels like it's 80% ads and 20% content
|
| for other YouTubers, i find that their ads are actually useful if
| they're relevant to the video's content. for example, i
| discovered Boot.dev when i was watching bigboxSWE
| account42 wrote:
| Personally I just stop watching videos and entire channels with
| sponsored segments. If they are okay with shilling some crappy
| product for a little cash I don't trust them not to sell out or
| be deceptive in less obvious ways as well.
| matsemann wrote:
| I also feel it's annoying that videos have become so long to
| cram in more ad breaks. It's not that I'm "tiktok generation
| that only can consume short content", but some things just
| aren't warranted a 15+ minute video. I'm interested, but not
| _that_ interested. Sorry Steve Mould, Veritasium etc., I love
| your videos, but many of them could have been a few minutes
| long
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| I also expect my entertainment providers to work for free.
| histories wrote:
| I think this is the most interesting read:
| https://blog.ajay.app/voting-and-pseudo-randomness-or-sponso...
| sheerun wrote:
| Skipping is not anonymous by default: "So, if you watch a video,
| and it does have segments, and you do skip a segment, then the
| server does get access the that segment ID, which is directly
| linked to the video."
| alkonaut wrote:
| What do you mean by "not anonymous" here? Obviously the server
| will receive what video you are looking at, as well as anything
| it can deduce from your request (such as IP) in order to work.
| Whether it just gets the video (required to work at all) or an
| individual segment (not quite required but could lessen the
| payload size) doesn't matter for the level of anonymity does
| it?
| pprotas wrote:
| uBlock Origin, Consent-o-Matic to automatically decline cookies,
| SponsorBlock and Argentinian VPN for $2/month YouTube premium
| makes the internet usable again.
| nicce wrote:
| What is specific with Argentinian?
| pprotas wrote:
| Some countries have way cheaper YouTube Premium prices, so
| you can just sign up in that country using a VPN. I think
| that these days Argentina might not be the cheapest anymore,
| though.
| nicce wrote:
| Ah, I thought that VPN should be bought from there.
| ivann wrote:
| YouTube has started cancelling premium subscription made in a
| different country.
|
| https://www.pcmag.com/news/youtube-cracking-down-on-cheap-pr...
| billpg wrote:
| But how will I become an actual member of the House of Lords by
| buying a square foot of land in Scotland if I skip the sponsor
| blocks of videos?
| frankzander wrote:
| Most thread opener start with "I" ... seems that people need to
| make a statement why or why they are not using Sponsorblock.
| Interesting.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-08-14 23:02 UTC)