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I've noticed a definite shift towards content creators doing in-video advertisements and promotions. I wonder if YouTube will eventually crack down on such thin

I've noticed a definite shift towards content creators doing in-video advertisements and promotions. I wonder if YouTube will eventually crack down on such things. To my knowledge, there is no way for YouTube to demonetize some third-party deal between a content creator and some company trying to sell VPN services or bluetooth earbuds. But I wouldn't put it past Google to try.

madamelic 5y ago
The best way for them to do this would be create a intermediary service as a way to "make it easier to connect advertisers and creators" by streamlining payment, terms, etc. While it would likely be a great boon (think Stripe + legal service + getting paid on time), it would likely end up like PayPal; creators constantly getting their accounts shut down for "suspicious activity" and their money pocketed.
- wernercd 5y ago
  "it would end up like paypal" Am I mistaken, but doesn't Google/Youtube do this already? I mean they aren't a payment processor like PayPal, but they shut down accounts all the time for little to no reason and most users have no recourse.
  - josephcsible 5y ago
    PayPal waits to shut down your account until it has a substantial amount of money in it, and then when they do shut it down, they "freeze" (basically steal) it all.
- jptech 5y ago
  Even if they don't go as far as creating a service to connect the two, they can just require the content creators to declare which products/services they are promoting. See it as a form of combating fake news or informing of bias in political posts. Google being google can connect the dots and squeeze more revenue out if that.
csours 5y ago
My question is: How has the best company in the world at adtech failed so hard on ads that content creators need to do this, and what implications does that failure raise.
- johnnyanmac 5y ago
  Even if the rates were fair and consistent, I'd feel this is an inevitable venture (unless youtube forbade monetized content creators from having in-video ads). Why not make more money from a 2nd source if it doesn't dimish the first source much? meanwhile, adverts probably have a much better ROI from working on a person by person basis than making a deal with google to cycle in x times per day. It's a win for everyone except the consumers (and it can be argued as an indirect win, since that 2nd source pushes many YTbers to go full time. So, more and more consistent content).
- Theodores 5y ago
  If your best friend tells you to buy a VPN or Bluetooth ear gadgets you take their recommendations on board. You believe them. If they have a referral code you take it. If they actually use the product too then you are sold. Particularly if they remind you next time you see them. Some people see their favourite YouTubers more than their friends. They see them as hero-friends. This is very much the future of advertising, linear TV style adverts are not for every product.
- tomschlick 5y ago
  Because they use a pretty brutal demonetization AI that takes away a huge source of revenue for creators over an issue like using the wrong word or talking about a hot button issue. Not only that but when they appeal it can sometimes take days to get a response and they miss out on the monetization of 90% of their views which all happen in that first few days.
- izacus 5y ago
  What do you mean "failed"? They're double dipping and earning twice the money. They get the YT advertising cut and the Patreon/paid adverts cut. It's like your Cable TV or favorite newspaper charging you for subscription and then filling up the content with ads because they can earn FROM BOTH.
ahofmann 5y ago
That would be pretty stupid (or at least risky) on YouTube's part. Content creators earn much more money from product placements and ads within their videos than they do from the ad share that YouTube pays out. With a medium-sized German YouTuber, you easily pay 50,000 euros for a 30-second review of the product. And in the video, he talks about several products. To earn 100,000 euros just from views, the video must be clicked millions of times. Content creators would immediately look for or build another platform if their most important source of revenue was blocked.
- mkipper 5y ago
  Sure, it's risky. But how risky? Content creators could move to a different platform, but that's also incredibly risky. Unless you're already hugely successful, abandoning YouTube probably isn't a great way to build a following. The same goes for building their own platform, with the added complication of it being prohibitively expensive to make a scalable, relatively ad-free video platform if you aren't a megacorp who generates billions of dollars from other revenue streams. So I suppose there is a risk, but it wouldn't surprise me if it's a risk that Google would live with if sponsored content was undermining their entire monetization plan for YouTube. I have no idea if they'd care enough to do this or not, but I don't think a scattered collection of content creators have enough leverage to scare Google here.
teeray 5y ago
I actually find those far more pleasing, AND I pay attention to them. Something advertisers should pay a premium for. The shift towards doing short in-rolls at completely inane times just makes me annoyed and ignore the product entirely.
mdoms 5y ago
This is really starting to take the shine off of Youtube for me. When it's an explicit ad (this video is sponsored by Hello Fresh, more on that later) then fine - it's irritating, as a Premium subscriber who pays not to see ads, but I get it. But if you follow anything DIY, maker, automotive or work related it's difficult to tell the sponsored posts from the non sponsored. Is this guy recommending Metallex because it's a good product, or because he was paid? Did the Mikita drill win this shootout because it's the better drill, or because they are the only manufacturer who supplied a tool free of charge? Are they putting a Garrett turbocharger into the car because that was the vision for the project, or because Garrett sent it to them?
- Hyolobrika 5y ago
  >as a Premium subscriber Why would you willingly give money to Google? I would use a third party client or an ad blocker.
nomorewords 5y ago
As I mentioned in another comment, I view this as the largest deal breaker for a lot of people. You pay to remove the YT ads, but you still get a 2m plug out of a 10m video which is already stretched so that it gets in the upper echelon of adsense monetization. Even if you don't see YT-placed ads, the content you are watching has evolved due to the effects of that.
- throwaway2048 5y ago
  https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sponsorblock/?src=search https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sponsorblock/... https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sponsorblock-for-youtube/mnjggcdmjocbbbhaepdhchncahnbgone https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sponsorblock-for-y... Sponsorblock works incredibly well at blocking in video sponsored ads.
- naravara 5y ago
  It seems like it would be easiest if YouTube just charged the content creators for hosting so they could work out their own sponsorship/advertising deals and pay YouTube at some sort of capitated rate for exposure. YouTube gets a bigger bank of content and more eyeballs in the site to see other ads and the content creators get to use YouTube for the built-in audience without needing to be subject to the vagaries of its monetization policies. Presumably the content creators would also be able to designate spaces in their videos for ads to insert for their older videos so YouTube can still make money off them without a retired content producer needing to take them down to avoid being charged for views.
- ohazi 5y ago
  Preroll and midroll ads can't be skipped. You can scrub past sponsor segments.
  - jfrunyon 5y ago
    The ads almost always take less time than finding the end of the sponsor segment would take me. (Plus they can be skipped if you have an adblocker. The only time I see YouTube ads is on my Roku in bed.)
handrous 5y ago
I don't expect they'll ban videos that are entirely ads, like re-posted TV commercials, and movie trailers. So I don't see why they'd ban videos that are part-ad. It's not like streaming TV shows and ordinary Hollywood movies don't do the same thing, double-dipping by charging for the content then putting anything from subtle product placements to actual, embedded ads complete with dialog in them. Cable has ads (didn't, at first) even though you pay for it. Books often have ads in them, even though you buy them—old pulp books have outright glossy-print ads in the middle, sometimes, and it's entirely ordinary for a publisher to advertise other books they sell near the front or end of a book. YouTube videos containing ads even if you pay for the service just makes it the same as everydamnthing else.
toper-centage 5y ago
It's funny. I've been using Nebula occasionally (terrible interface, slow as molasses, close to no discoverability of videos, but otherwise nice content), and it's always so weird how videos just get to the point and then end abruptly. I grew so used to pointless intros, stretched content, and sponsored outros that Nebula videos feel really off in contrast.

madamelic 5y ago

The best way for them to do this would be create a intermediary service as a way to "make it easier to connect advertisers and creators" by streamlining payment, terms, etc. While it would likely be a great boon (think Stripe + legal service + getting paid on time), it would likely end up like PayPal; creators constantly getting their accounts shut down for "suspicious activity" and their money pocketed.

wernercd 5y ago
"it would end up like paypal" Am I mistaken, but doesn't Google/Youtube do this already? I mean they aren't a payment processor like PayPal, but they shut down accounts all the time for little to no reason and most users have no recourse.
- josephcsible 5y ago
  PayPal waits to shut down your account until it has a substantial amount of money in it, and then when they do shut it down, they "freeze" (basically steal) it all.
jptech 5y ago
Even if they don't go as far as creating a service to connect the two, they can just require the content creators to declare which products/services they are promoting. See it as a form of combating fake news or informing of bias in political posts. Google being google can connect the dots and squeeze more revenue out if that.

csours 5y ago

My question is: How has the best company in the world at adtech failed so hard on ads that content creators need to do this, and what implications does that failure raise.

johnnyanmac 5y ago
Even if the rates were fair and consistent, I'd feel this is an inevitable venture (unless youtube forbade monetized content creators from having in-video ads). Why not make more money from a 2nd source if it doesn't dimish the first source much? meanwhile, adverts probably have a much better ROI from working on a person by person basis than making a deal with google to cycle in x times per day. It's a win for everyone except the consumers (and it can be argued as an indirect win, since that 2nd source pushes many YTbers to go full time. So, more and more consistent content).
Theodores 5y ago
If your best friend tells you to buy a VPN or Bluetooth ear gadgets you take their recommendations on board. You believe them. If they have a referral code you take it. If they actually use the product too then you are sold. Particularly if they remind you next time you see them. Some people see their favourite YouTubers more than their friends. They see them as hero-friends. This is very much the future of advertising, linear TV style adverts are not for every product.
tomschlick 5y ago
Because they use a pretty brutal demonetization AI that takes away a huge source of revenue for creators over an issue like using the wrong word or talking about a hot button issue. Not only that but when they appeal it can sometimes take days to get a response and they miss out on the monetization of 90% of their views which all happen in that first few days.
izacus 5y ago
What do you mean "failed"? They're double dipping and earning twice the money. They get the YT advertising cut and the Patreon/paid adverts cut. It's like your Cable TV or favorite newspaper charging you for subscription and then filling up the content with ads because they can earn FROM BOTH.

ahofmann 5y ago

That would be pretty stupid (or at least risky) on YouTube's part. Content creators earn much more money from product placements and ads within their videos than they do from the ad share that YouTube pays out. With a medium-sized German YouTuber, you easily pay 50,000 euros for a 30-second review of the product. And in the video, he talks about several products. To earn 100,000 euros just from views, the video must be clicked millions of times. Content creators would immediately look for or build another platform if their most important source of revenue was blocked.

mkipper 5y ago
Sure, it's risky. But how risky? Content creators could move to a different platform, but that's also incredibly risky. Unless you're already hugely successful, abandoning YouTube probably isn't a great way to build a following. The same goes for building their own platform, with the added complication of it being prohibitively expensive to make a scalable, relatively ad-free video platform if you aren't a megacorp who generates billions of dollars from other revenue streams. So I suppose there is a risk, but it wouldn't surprise me if it's a risk that Google would live with if sponsored content was undermining their entire monetization plan for YouTube. I have no idea if they'd care enough to do this or not, but I don't think a scattered collection of content creators have enough leverage to scare Google here.

teeray 5y ago

I actually find those far more pleasing, AND I pay attention to them. Something advertisers should pay a premium for. The shift towards doing short in-rolls at completely inane times just makes me annoyed and ignore the product entirely.

mdoms 5y ago

This is really starting to take the shine off of Youtube for me. When it's an explicit ad (this video is sponsored by Hello Fresh, more on that later) then fine - it's irritating, as a Premium subscriber who pays not to see ads, but I get it. But if you follow anything DIY, maker, automotive or work related it's difficult to tell the sponsored posts from the non sponsored. Is this guy recommending Metallex because it's a good product, or because he was paid? Did the Mikita drill win this shootout because it's the better drill, or because they are the only manufacturer who supplied a tool free of charge? Are they putting a Garrett turbocharger into the car because that was the vision for the project, or because Garrett sent it to them?

Hyolobrika 5y ago
>as a Premium subscriber Why would you willingly give money to Google? I would use a third party client or an ad blocker.

nomorewords 5y ago

As I mentioned in another comment, I view this as the largest deal breaker for a lot of people. You pay to remove the YT ads, but you still get a 2m plug out of a 10m video which is already stretched so that it gets in the upper echelon of adsense monetization. Even if you don't see YT-placed ads, the content you are watching has evolved due to the effects of that.

throwaway2048 5y ago
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sponsorblock/?src=search https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sponsorblock/... https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sponsorblock-for-youtube/mnjggcdmjocbbbhaepdhchncahnbgone https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sponsorblock-for-y... Sponsorblock works incredibly well at blocking in video sponsored ads.
naravara 5y ago
It seems like it would be easiest if YouTube just charged the content creators for hosting so they could work out their own sponsorship/advertising deals and pay YouTube at some sort of capitated rate for exposure. YouTube gets a bigger bank of content and more eyeballs in the site to see other ads and the content creators get to use YouTube for the built-in audience without needing to be subject to the vagaries of its monetization policies. Presumably the content creators would also be able to designate spaces in their videos for ads to insert for their older videos so YouTube can still make money off them without a retired content producer needing to take them down to avoid being charged for views.
ohazi 5y ago
Preroll and midroll ads can't be skipped. You can scrub past sponsor segments.
- jfrunyon 5y ago
  The ads almost always take less time than finding the end of the sponsor segment would take me. (Plus they can be skipped if you have an adblocker. The only time I see YouTube ads is on my Roku in bed.)

handrous 5y ago

I don't expect they'll ban videos that are entirely ads, like re-posted TV commercials, and movie trailers. So I don't see why they'd ban videos that are part-ad. It's not like streaming TV shows and ordinary Hollywood movies don't do the same thing, double-dipping by charging for the content then putting anything from subtle product placements to actual, embedded ads complete with dialog in them. Cable has ads (didn't, at first) even though you pay for it. Books often have ads in them, even though you buy them—old pulp books have outright glossy-print ads in the middle, sometimes, and it's entirely ordinary for a publisher to advertise other books they sell near the front or end of a book. YouTube videos containing ads even if you pay for the service just makes it the same as everydamnthing else.

toper-centage 5y ago

It's funny. I've been using Nebula occasionally (terrible interface, slow as molasses, close to no discoverability of videos, but otherwise nice content), and it's always so weird how videos just get to the point and then end abruptly. I grew so used to pointless intros, stretched content, and sponsored outros that Nebula videos feel really off in contrast.