8mo ago

YouTube looks to be testing server-side ad injection to counter ad blockers

9to5google.com YouTube looks to be testing server-side ad injection to counter ad blockers

YouTube's crackdown on tools that block advertising continues with server-side ad injection. The developer of...

YouTube is testing server-side ad injection to counter ad blockers, integrating ads directly into videos to make them indistinguishable from the main content.
This new method complicates ad blocking, including tools like SponsorBlock, which now face challenges in accurately identifying and skipping sponsored segments.
The feature is currently in testing and not widely rolled out, with YouTube encouraging users to subscribe to YouTube Premium for an ad-free experience.

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8mo ago

YouTube testing server-side ad injection to counter ad blockers

9to5google.com /2024/06/12/youtube-ad-injection/

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OK, can I be real about this for a second?
I'm torn about Youtube ad stuff. Genuinely.
On the one hand the ads suck, we have a good way to bypass them and I certainly don't want to watch Youtube videos if the ads are unskippable.
On the other hand, if I'm being honest I watch more Youtube than Netflix or Amazon Prime and I sure give those guys money for a subscription. If I counted the cost per watched minute, Youtube Premium would make way more sense than a bunch of subs I do pay.
But I also don't want to watch a Youtube that is a paid service. That was never the point. The reason I engage with it so much is it's supposed to be UGC, not TV.
So yeah, torn. Youtube is very weird and the relationship we all have with it is super dysfunctional, creators and viewers alike. We made a very strange future and now we have to deal with it.
- I pay for YouTube Premium. I get a lot of value from it, and streaming video isn’t cheap. I don’t think it’s reasonable for anyone to think they should provide it for free.
  
  Yeeeah, but my issue with that is they generated the expectation that it'd be free by using their investment money to muscle out smaller competitors. There was a time where Youtube was the biggest of a set of UGC video sites and some of the others were competitive. Now it's the only real alternative.
  So from that perspective they made their bed, now they sleep in it.
  
  Yeeeah, but my issue with that is they generated the expectation that it'd be free by using their investment money to muscle out smaller competitors.
  All of YouTube's competitors were doing the same thing, use ads to subsidize free video hosting. It just happened to be that YouTube was the survivor. If there was competition, it would likely have the same business model that YouTube has. Spotify may be building a YouTube competitor based on the same model.
  
  Yep, that's also fair. Google is the leftovers from the "let them fight" approach to venture capital. Now we have a monopoly on many areas and nobody's left to do anything when Godzilla comes to visit.
  
  I don't give a shit if it's reasonable anymore.
  Google has done enough terrible things over the years, ruined enough services, some of them paid services, continually harmed content creators with their trash algorithm, refused to defend them from bogus copyright strikes, refused to provide meaningful support to anybody but advertisers, all the while hosting hate on their platform, for profit. So I don't give a damn what's fair to them.
  They won't get a penny from me ever again. I'll continue to find every way of accessing any content on that platform that I choose, without ads, and without paying them, and it has absolutely nothing to do with ethics or reason. It is entirely, 100%, because fuck Google.
  Fuck their ad network, fuck manifest 3, fuck their "integrity" checking, fuck all of this. I'd rather see it all burn to the ground than help them turn the internet into cable tv.
  
  If you’re not actively blocking connections to their servers (by any number of means) it doesn’t matter whether you consciously give them money or not.
  There is so much third party tracking in apps and websites that it’s really got to be at the network level. They make bank by tracking you and selling that data for profit.
  I’ve been Google-free for months now and so far the only inconvenience has been ReCAPTCHAs not loading, but that’s limited to just a handful of websites that I don’t care enough to use in the first place.
  
  And if this attitude spreads, which arguably it should, the service will simply be shut down. Unfortunately I think this may end up being a great loss for humanity as a whole if that happens. Elsewhere in this thread I compared it to the Library of Alexandria for its sheer content of 20-odd years worth of nearly all of humanity's culture, news, and technical information.
  I don't know what to do with this. The dragon must be slain but the hoard must be preserved, and I'm not sure how we accomplish that. The contents of YouTube should be backed up and made available to a public data store outside of Google's grasp, ideally as a public utility probably maintained by tax money, and youtube can remain as a front-end to that service. But actually getting that done in the modern day seems..... we'll say, slim. For one thing the total youtube data package is about a fucktillion gigabytes and the only people able to host it are the ones who already have it. For another, Google will argue in court that videos uploaded to their service are their property, and they'll win that argument.
  So we can start again anew, but we must mourn what we lose, because it may be significant. Like it or not, YouTube is a significant percentage of the recorded data output of the human race. Just pray, once we kill the beast, that you never have to replace any parts on a car model year 2004-2018 - because you won't find good repair manuals anywhere and all the good tutorials are buried in the belly of YouTube.
  
  If needed, I would spend 40 times the time and effort to watch one of their videos without a single ad than it would take to just watch their ads with the video I want to see sprinkled in.
  
  Oh sure servers do cost money but Google wants to have their cake and eat it to with the creators that make people actually want to use the site despite all their bullshit. Changing standards of what is and isn't not acceptable coming from the top has made every creator dance and squirm to escape the very real eventuality of having weeks of work mean nothing. Google doesn't respect the people making the product they are selling so I refuse to respect the bill they try to send me
- The problem is that user generated content still takes time. Which means money. Also, people don't want vlogs with a drywall background anymore and the number of creators who can get away with simple prop free skits are double digit, at best. So making the videos also cost money.
  People make up this fantaasy land where art should be done with no compensation to be pure. Which ignores that the vast majority of art in human history was either made by the independently wealthy or as a "patron" system where... an independently wealthy person paid an artist to make them look good.
  And that even extends to the modern day. People get angry about "nepo babies" but... it takes a lot of time and money to refine your music to a meaningful degree. The garage bands that get discovered playing at a local bar are VERY much the exception and almost everyone universally considers their best albums to be the first couple after they got signed by a label and could drill down and refine it.
  Youtube and the like are basically the first time that "the everyperson" could make art for a living. Unfortunately... that means they need to get paid. Ads are of very questionable use. Youtube Premium is almost universally praised by any creator who is willing to talk about it. But we need some way of paying those mid tier creators who are popular enough to do it for a living but not popular enough to get 120 bucks a year from their fans to upload MAYBE one video (looking at you Michael Reeves).
  
  Early youtube with the drywall backgrounds in skits or just random bits of life were what made it fun. The fact that the majority of the content now means it is just another streaming service with an expected income for someone instead of being something they did in their spare time. The switch from amateur to professional content ruined youtube.
  
  The problem is that user generated content still takes time. Which means money. Also, people don't want vlogs with a drywall background anymore and the number of creators who can get away with simple prop free skits are double digit, at best. So making the videos also cost money.
  That's why I don't use Sponsorblock: it hurts the wrong people.
  But I'll still block the ads because to hell with Google and their monopoly. I'm only interested in supporting the artists directly, Google can get fucked.
- I used to whitelist yt on my ad block because a I know portion of it goes to the creators. Then yt took advantage of me by adding more and more intrusive ads. Now I support creators directly whenever I can.
  
  The problem is that the patreon model inherently only supports the big creators. Many of whom only BECAME big because they had alternative funding sources for so long.
  For example: Giant Bomb more or less imploded a few years back. Nextlander (Alex, Brad, and Vinny), Remap (Formerly Waypoint but Patrick Klepek, Rob Zachny, Cado Contreras) , and Jeff Gerstmann (hmmm? I wonder who that could be) and even Giant Bomb (Fandom) are doing great. But people like Abby Russel or Renata Price very much immediately fell into that "Well, I like her but she is one person and I am already blowing 20 or 30 bucks a month on patreons..." hole.
  And we see that on youtube/twitch. Creators will mostly not care and then suddenly do a year long subathon because they understand... they are in that threshold where they make just enough off of ad and sponsor revenue that they can just keep their resume updated but are fucked if Youtube/twitch change ANYTHING. They need to get to that threshold where people will subscribe to a patreon.
  And the "Well, I will just subscribe to the creators I think are worth it" inherently fucks them over.
  I'll add on that, for all his many flaws, Ludwig Ahlgren (?) has done a lot of good discussion on this topic. Because as twitch and youtube stop giving streamers giant signing bonuses, it gets harder and harder for the next crop of big streamers to come into existence. Because if there isn't money to get people out of that O(100) concurrents mid-tier... yeah.
  
  That's a fair point, I do pay for subs in some smaller sites. A lot of the time I still watch the Youtube version because... well, that way the creators get paid twice and I'm probably already on YT, but still.
  
  100% agree. I follow a few content creators who include a Cash App or Paypal information in the description box. They don't demand cash** because they do it for the love of what they do, and don't demand subscriptions or anything else. If I have an extra dollar, I send it. I'm guessing this either isn't their only revenue stream or do well enough that it is. If everyone who is appreciative would do a dollar or few donations, maybe it is a livble wage, with or without youtube's payment?
- I do try to block ads, but tbh it's impossible to be mad at Google for pushing them. YouTube is a modern miracle of engineering -- no other platform on the planet hosts the scale of video it does, indefinitely, with instant access, for free. It is more than fair for them to recoup the massive cost. Personally, if they had a cheaper version of Premium without the music features, I'd pay for it in a heartbeat.
  
  YouTube is a modern miracle of engineering -- no other platform on the planet hosts the scale of video it does, indefinitely, with instant access, for free
  Because Google chokes the market. There could be plenty of other competitors if Google charged for it like other companies would. Google subsidized YouTube with the rest of their company's profits, not to provide us a free platform because they're so nice, but to prevent competition. As long as YouTube was free, no other companies would be able to keep up with the costs, therefore no one else would enter the market.
  If this shit is so expensive, and they want money, they can gate the content like every other streaming service, and then deal with the competition that would swell up.
  
  If google "charged for it like other companies would" then youtube would not exist. The ONLY companies that can handle that volume of data are Google, Amazon, and Microsoft: The three big cloud service providers. And Microsoft noped the fuck out and Amazon have some strong purges on most streams.
  And... there were other sites that tried to compete with youtube. Those of us who are old enough will remember subscribing to Rooster Teeth or Giant Bomb but watching the videos on youtube because "the site player is shit". Let alone all the general purpose video sites that either became dirtier than a truck stop lizard who barebacks constantly or became liveleak and was all about Faces of Death and revenge porn... and then went out of business.
  Videos is INCREDIBLY expensive. That is why the current rise of sites like Nebula and Gun Jesus's site and Corridor Crew's site all paywall watching anything. Because free video would cost way too much.
  If this shit is so expensive, and they want money, they can gate the content like every other streaming service, and then deal with the competition that would swell up.
  So... you actively dislike a model where you can choose to watch videos in exchange for watching an ad and instead insist upon paying to watch anything. AND still don't want to pay to watch anything because Youtube Premium lets you do that anyway.
  
  The Giant Bomb site player specifically was way better than the contemporary Youtube player for a good long while. They were also better at prioritizing bitrate over resolution, since they weren't obsessed with pretending they had a pixel count advantage over competitors while compressing contents down to mush. If anything it's ironic that Youtube will now try to sell you bitrate as part of their subscription without cranking up the resolution, presumably because their creators no longer even try to upload 4K anymore.
  Sorry, now I'm bringing up legacy gripes from a different decade. Carry on.
  
  Even if it’s a good product, you shouldn’t support the monopolist.
- Then clearly it's not a smart choice to make videos and have them uploaded to a scummy place like YouTube.
  Their issues are not my problem. I have my own stresses at work, you don't see me bitching about it to strangers online.
  Don't like your job or the terms your forced to adhere too, quit.
  
  So... because you had a bad they should not even attempt to pursue their dreams and make art/"art"?
  Also... I really hope your job is a perfect wonderland with no ethical or moral complications. Otherwise, it is your fault for working there instead of somewhere else, obviously.
  We live in a late stage capitalistic hellscape and still snipe each other constantly. Everybody would rather fuck over everyone else than show any degree of solidarity.
  
  Not once did I say they shouldn't persue anything...if I'm presented with a contract from work which I don't agree with,I'm looking for a new job...
  Also... I really hope your job is a perfect wonderland with no ethical or moral complications. Otherwise, it is your fault for working there instead of somewhere else, obviously.
  It would be my fault for staying somewhere that is objectively bad for me...yes..it's not your problem, it's mine..
  Why is it the customers responsibility to fix the companies problem for the employees...explain.
  
  The ads google shows have been consistently proven to still often contain malware or scams, to the point the federal government recommends you use an adblocker to protect yourself. Google refuses to do anything to stop this. Don’t bitch about how hard artists have it when they demand you support criminal enterprise and subject yourself to online stalking or identity theft in order to prop up their hopes and dreams. That ain’t solidarity, you numbfuck, that’s capitalist exploitation of the masses.
- I think Google created a model that is unsustainable from the get go, because they have infinite money glitches and used this to monopolize the market and lure in creators.
  It could be sustainable for non-premium users if the amount of ads was similar to what it was, idk, 10 years ago, 14 years ago. However back then they were not making nearly enough to cover their costs and pay creators handsomely.
  I like to support creators but I also liked youtube better when it was mostly common people doing their thing however the fuck they wanted, instead of this hyper-profissionalized tv-wannabe corporate channels that grow to be mammoths.
  Problem is, we accepted the weird assumption that successful content creators on the internet are entitled to be millionaires, or to make a lot more money per month than say, a successful person in a common profession. If content creators got into youtube with the mindset that at best they'd live a life that is middle class instead of trying to become rich, then youtube would need a lot less money than it needs today, and content would go back to being more relaxed not mega professional and extremely polished videos from channels that employ dozens of people.
  But alas, I guess successful video creators on youtube are supposed to be rich and deserve to earn more money than a doctor, and youtube is supposed to be a viable source of income for mega corporations that used to be mainly TV and other traditional media but then freaked out about losing people to the internet.
  That's what I thought at first but who am I kidding, if content creators got paid less youtube would still be very popular and google would still do whatever the fuck they want and shove more ads in it anyways. And also, paying top creators so much money is another way to prevent competition, creators won't choose another platform if they can't match the pay.
- The deciding factor for me is how little of the money goes to creators, and how arbitrarily Google twiddles the content guidelines. If I'm going to pay a subscription for the category of content on YouTube, I'll pay for Nebula and Dropout so that I know my money is actually making it to the people I like.
- It's worth paying for but not if it includes DRM, proprietary software and preferably not giving money to Don't Be Evil company.

230 comments