I find clearly marked sponsored content on YouTube a non-issue. Yeah there are scummy or questionable sponsors but overall I get why they exist and in comparison to the alternative I think its an acceptable solution.
There's people and companies on YouTube that produce outstanding content and I have no issue supporting them (YouTube Premium). I get that's not an option for a lot of people though so barring the invasive tracking for ads on YouTube, this is the next best thing.
Could say the same about ads on a website, yet most people that I know use an ad blocker.
For sponsor, I use SponsorBlock. I would say it's my second most favourite extension after Ublock Origin. I'm always amazed when it just skip over those section. For low quality video, it even start the video at the conclusion/recap, so you get all the info you need without spending too much time.
The problem I have with most ads is the tracking. I'd compare sponsor messages with print ads in magazine. Theyre probably somewhat relevant to the target audience of the channel but everyone sees the same one.
Interesting, I feel there is a difference, but I cannot quite put my finger on it. Ads on most websites feel more obtrusive. Maybe it's because on websites, there is a spatial separation, but in videos it is temporal? I can look at the video without the sponsored content constantly trying to grab my attention. It is just a certain window of time, where the content also does not continue, so it is relatively easy to tune out? Never mind the fact that I can skip over it if it is terrible sponsored content?
Seems an odd way of looking at it. The "sponsored content" typically aims to monopolise your attention for 30 seconds of your life. The ad is typically just a box a few hundred pixels wide which either sits in a column I'm not actually reading or is easily scrolled past. "Ad blindness" is a thing
It's like I don't get upset by crappy stock photos or navigation bars, but would give up on a website that took 30 seconds to load...
There’s a fundamental difference between a sponsor segment and most in-page web advertising (or indeed YouTube ads).
A sponsor segment is an advertiser targeting the whole audience of a video by directly working with the video creator. Trustworthy creators will select sponsors which make sense for their audience and don’t detract from their credibility or brand.
An ad, though, is a break in the content where the host basically takes each of their audiencemembers, and separately auctions off the right to talk to them to a shady back room full of random hawkers.
Each audience member gets a random ad which the content creator has no control over or awareness of, nor any relationship with other than financial.
What do I mind is that the consent is usually implied a-priori, and when it's not, the UX of opting out is an unnecessary nuissance. Advertising is not about informing users, but creating a need before we're able to say no. I'm driving a car and can't access my phone, YT plays a recommended video with sponsored content I hear before I have the choice to switch it off. That's just a tiny example, but these things add up.
(Speaking as someone with experience in psychology, publishing and ad tech here, so that's my primary focus/perspective.)
Here's my personal ideal for a platform like YT:
- Take a service fee cut (e.g. 30%)
- allocate the remaining 70% of money to the people I watched
(optional) let me allocate some of my budget to a random pool of other creators so I can support their growth/someone else's free access to content.
This can work. An example would be Guardian relying on donations, where many people pay so others can access their content. (look for their case studies to learn more)
I'd argue the consent is you clicking on the video to watch it. Sponsor spots are the norm, especially for large well-known channels.
The fee is charged to users if I understand it correctly? So essentially YouTube premium? That can work, but not everyone can afford to spend money on a subscription and if you block access to the platform it's arguably you will be able to grow to the size and diversity YouTube has. Floatplane is an alternative where you can directly subscribe to creators but that's not cheap if you watch a wide variety.
> Sponsor spots are the norm
It is the norm, but whether the norm is good is a different question. If you speak with the creators, big or small (say a single person vs. a huge publisher), the would very much prefer not to rely on ads or sponsorships. They're forced to do so. Speaking from personal experience working with publishers and creators here.
Ironically, the biggest obstacle for me pushing the alternatives were the publishers' sales teams: people with decent salaries, with mortgages to pay, whose life depended on ads or sponsorships. Even the adtech companies I worked with were happy to pay for my work, esp. during the cookiegeddon times (2019).
> I'd argue the consent is you clicking on the video to watch it.
Fair argument but in practice, given the amount of UX work done so I do watch the sponsored content, it takes a toll on you. The only solution would be to stop using YT at all.
What UX work goes into making sure you watch sponsored content? Every content creator I know uses chapters to mark where sponsored content is, Youtube has a flag at the beginning of the video to note that this video contains sponsored content. I'd argue they do a lot of UX work to make sure you know this video has a sponsor in it.
Saying we should have an off switch is different than saying there is tons of UX work going into making you watch these videos. Especially since there is no incentive on Youtube's part to do this because they don't get a content of sponsored revenue. You are moving goal post.
I think you’re right, I conflated two issues I was talking about earlier: the attention cost of avoiding this model in general and the attention cost of ignoring sponsored content on YT. Thanks for pointing that out.
I personally wouldn't want to blanket-drop sponsored content from the videos I watch, but this seems really nicely put together, and a version which let me exclude "sketchier" sponsors but keep everything else (or perhaps lets me skip ones I've seen before) would be great.
"Just look at the poor leftist Youtubers pushing NordVPN and tell me faces don't scream Stockholm syndrome" - I don't even understand what this means... I watch plenty of apolitical youtube that is sponsored by Nord (Mentour Pilot), am I missing something here?
I'm assuming the point the author was shooting for was that there was something a bit odd about political commentators pausing their rants about corporate greed and people over profit to deliver paid pitches for a software company, with the added suggestion they tended to look awkward doing it.
But yeah, it's clumsily delivered and a random political swipe probably doesn't help people trust a browser extension...
If I were to guess I would suggest that he might be referring to the modern pro-censorship leftists and NordVPN could be seen as a work around for that censorship. I think a lot of demand for VPNs is from right-wing people who don't want their posts about climate change, vaccines, immigration etc. to be tied to their home IP address. I think the modern view is now 'if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear' where before it was important that personal anonymity was maintained as a default even by those who don't need it so that a dissenters (those that do need it) could maintain anonymity and not have that behavior to be considered grounds for suspicion.
The SponsorBlock addon lets you whitelist channels you want to support. Also has options to skip self-promotion (including like and subscribe reminders) and quiet parts of videos.
But it doesn't change anything though. Unlike ads that are paid on actual display count, a sponsored segment is paid to the content creator by the sponsor and... that's it. For content creators it literally doesn't change anything whether you watch the sponsored segment or skip it, automatically or manually.
You don't support a channel more by watching the sponsored content. I just watch it when content creators make it fun to watch.
Yeah I shoot myself in the foot here-what I meant is that those poor people are forced to support the very system they’re criticising. It’s absurd. I find it depressing and somewhat funny.
I’ll drop it because people are reading a bit too much into it! Thanks for the comments.
"Won't someone please think of the unheard internet leftists?" No group is as dominant in a space as leftists online, you're allowed to make fun of them - they'll be ok.
Worst comes to worst they'll get you fired and swatted. They'll survive though.
The people first said we don’t want to be tracked! Create content without tracking and we will pay. Then, they said we don’t want any advertisements in our videos! Give us a subscription and we will pay. Finally they said, we will pay when we feel like it! Give us videos!
The problem from the video creator's perspective is that Youtube often decides to "demonetize" your video for breaking one of their "community standards" rules, which are vague, constantly changing, and seemingly randomly enforced. If that happens, their video gets no payout from Youtube. Its no surprise they would take sponsorships into their own hands in order to get a more fair and consistent paycheck.
Yes, but premium revenue is decided by watch time, long videos get more revenue usually, with videos at around 90min length being 50/50 payout from ads and watch time. Assuming ads only at the beginning and end of videos and the video target the "average" audience, and average view duration of 30mins.
So you're looking at a 50% reduction in income minimum, much more if you make short videos that target audiences with higher $/cpm like finance or health, in those youtube premium is probably only around 5-10% of revenue.
I have a paid youtube subscription to avoid the ads, but the in-video sponsored content still appears anyway. At least I can scrub the video timeline forward to get through it faster, but it would be nice if youtube would send an edited feed to paid members so we'd just get the real content.
Given the rise of services such as Patreon, Substack and OF, I feel like people have done exactly that. And yet, it's not enough, Patreon & Substack track. They just can't get enough of that sweet sweet data.
The joke here is that people criticising capitalism (good) are forced, due to the issues with the current system, to support it. I did my best to make the site not seem too serious, I even call the extension half-assed and I really do mean it. I don't care if people download the extension. It's about the discussion surrounding it and people taking a step back to realise how stupid the situation is.
I suppose my comment is an elaborate way of saying: thank you for reading this and engaging. I mean it in a sincere way.
100% agree with the latter part, 50% with the former. The tech itself is not that useful, but there's potential (the solution to the bigger issues is not technical, but societal).
> And, that being able to compensate someone for their work is such a complex process that it requires either a bunch of unknown middlemen, or an overengineered ponzi scheme.
Being able to compensate someone for their work is a complex process. Most Youtubers and or media publications would not exist if they asked for a fee upfront.
I'm going to flip this question around. Would we be worse off if fewer people were unable to start businesses out of Youtube channels? I'd think so. A lot of novel art and education has come out of realizing Youtube could be a full-time job. You jump to MrBeast as the junk food of Youtube but I can honestly say I have never seen a MrBeast video but I frequently look at things like FreeCodeCamp or even the more educational end of entertainment like Tom Scott or extensive product review channels like Project Farm. I'm glad they exist and I'd happily watch a sponsor spot for them.
100% agree with you but there are different levels of complexity and the one I'm talking about is truly ridiculous.
Example:
OpenRTB + VAST chain (standards used for targeted advertising) required to display an ad on the site involve dozens of parties the user has no knowledge about. In fact before an ad is displayed on the page, there's no way of knowing who and how will be involved in processing your data. The consent is implied and opt-out is enforced poorly to put it mildly. That's the complexity I'm talking about.
What you are doing and what you are saying don't match. Let's be clear here, I think this project is great and I don't want this to come off as a criticism of the project. It's a really fun idea and novel use of machine learning. That being said, the sponsored Youtube content you are targeting avoids all of the issues you are talking about. There is no fingerprinting, shadow profiles, or tracking. Youtuber says "video sponsored by NordVPN use code xXx360NoScopexXx for 50 cents off" and then the sponsor spot is done.
Correct, it is more simple than the OpenRTB auction chain, but not in terms of the logistics of creating this type of content. See the sibling comment for @falcolas for more details.
I should've used more examples but tried to keep it terse. Thanks for pointing this out.
The complexity here is to have to: 1) write, 2) present, and 3) edit a video segment selling a product you probably wouldn't bother mentioning to people if you had other options. It's not technical.
The alternative (for instance) would be an automatic system distributing the $$ I pay YT among the creators I watch. That's significantly less complexity for the end-user and the content creator.
> an automatic system distributing the $$ I pay YT
So youtube red instead? They split the creator portion of your subscription between the creators you watch (assuming they've setup the ability to get paid by YT). Worth quite a bit more than ad views too, last I heard.
This still requires you to pay which brings us back to step 1. You are also implying that the content creator does not use the product and would not mention it otherwise which is not always true.
It's unfortunate that many of the creators I love have had to resort to sponsored spots. In my experience the companies offering such deals are shady at best, with many engaging in what I would consider outright fraud.
The creators I subscribe to aren't typically large enough to hire (much less have the need for) a team. I've given them money either through watching ads or in some cases through Patreon. I realise the first pays very little, and that the second takes an unreasonably large cut. But it shouldn't have to be the only way.
The creators I subscribe to aren't typically large enough to hire (much less have the need for) a team.
You'd be amazed who has a team behind them. Lots of seemingly tiny creators have an editor and a writing partner. Even small channels have people for camera work, sound, and graphics. Bigger channels have huge teams (for example, Linus Tech Tips has 15m subscribers and has more than 80 people working on it.)
They don’t need to be paid. Information should be free. They create and we consume after all. If they stop creating we will move on to the next creator.
The question I ask myself is: why is this so complicated? Advertising in any shape and form should not be the default here. We've just dug ourselves so deep in this mindset that it's hard to see another way.
My approach is to ad block, sponsor block, and then have a budget I allocate to the creators that let me. 1 usd here and there can make a difference.
Love the idea of AI-based version of SponsorBlock. Could be a great fallback feature for SponsorBlock when it doesn't have crowdsourced data for a given video. This would be a great addition to a podcast app.
Here's the dream: I want a cheap, open model I can fine tune and create a SponsorBlock agent (pretending to be the extension user) "watching" videos and submitting their timestamps, so they're ready before the first person submits their manual version.
Here's a better dream: have a default, sustainable way of paying those people without involving layers of middlemen.
Thanks! SponsorBlock is definitely a better option here.
There's a way of making this thing perform really, really smooth if you excuse the pun, but it requires some upfront cost, e.g. fine tune an LLM or use something like ULMFit. GPT is great for prototyping these sorts of things but I think we've become a bit narrow-focused recently due to the entire ChatGPT hype.
Give the site/article a read for more context if you haven't!
I support YouTube creators I watch on patreon, yet obviously that doesn't remove their sponsored content in their videos. This is a brilliant solution to this.
Those creators should give you a sponsor-free version then. If not, the creator knows this and wants you to watch the sponsored video anyway. That means the monetization from the sponsorship is still baked into your deal with the creator.
Please read the article first. That's not the intent here. The goal would be to funnel the money to the creators instead of using a bunch of middlemen. And, the main goal now is to make people thing about the ridiculousness of the current state of things.
I'm speaking as someone who spent a decade working on helping publishers monetise their content without the unnecessary bullshit. I share your sentiment.
One of my proudest career achievements was to get uncle Murdoch pay me to build an ad blocker (ended up quitting the job and taking a break to work on my mental health, but I still thing it was a valuable fuck you experience).
Youtube deserves money for the ridiculous value add it does.
My content creators deserve money because they are unreal entertainers.
If Squarespace wants to fund all this, why not. Sometimes my favourite, Simon Whistler, will make the ad funny and worth watching. Worst case scenario, fast forward a bit.
Youtube knows what videos have promotional content. I'm seriously hoping for a search filter that natively removes them from results....plugins don't work for me since I watch primarily on a smart TV. For now I have resorted to blocking channels with promoted content, that's the great thing about yt, there's always another channel out there with similar content
I'm seriously hoping that YT will start offering their content creators an equitable cut and that goes for Patreon too. While a technology solution might hide the problem it's certainly not going to solve it.
That would be the dream. We just keep piling up the layers of complexity, build systems that put middlemen between creators and people enjoying their work. At this stage, I think the issue is more cultural than technical.
The page and the repo contain more context (give it a read, even if just for the buttery puns!).
But, in short: It's quite crude. I extract captions from YT videos using a private YT API (web scraping was a huge pain ;/), then I massage them a little bit and use GPT to process the timestamps.
A waaaay better approach is possible, but I'll need to see if it's worth pursuing first.
PS. SponsorBlock has a huge timestamp DB so I'm considering reaching out to the authors to see if we can create an agent using their extension and aiding their crowdsourcing effort.
There's people and companies on YouTube that produce outstanding content and I have no issue supporting them (YouTube Premium). I get that's not an option for a lot of people though so barring the invasive tracking for ads on YouTube, this is the next best thing.