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Are the sponsor parts really so bad? To me not only is it easy to skip, I want indie people to make enough money to produce high quality content; otherwise medi

Are the sponsor parts really so bad? To me not only is it easy to skip, I want indie people to make enough money to produce high quality content; otherwise media is just what a few biggies want to fund. They’re not enough from YouTube itself unless you’re in the top percentile. Also what sponsored content are people downloading versus just streaming live? I don’t get the use case.

Ansil849 5y ago
> Are the sponsor parts really so bad? Yes. Some of us don't like being assaulted with sales pitches everywhere we look.
- judge2020 5y ago
  Sure, but creators don’t have many other avenues for revenue when you’re already using YouTube-dl(p) to download videos without watching ads. I imagine sponsor spots will be devalued over time as sponsorblock usage continues to grow, especially for creators with audiences that watch content on desktop more than mobile.
  - Forbo 5y ago
    Is it apparent to the sponsor when someone is watching using youtube-dlp versus a regular view? I'd imagine most sponsored segments are negotiated based on subscriber count or view numbers.
    - crtasm 5y ago
      I don't believe the view counter gets incremented when using any unofficial front-end/downloader.
      - boolemancer 5y ago
        How would Google's backend know whether the traffic comes from their own frontend vs a utility like youtube-dl (assume for the sake of argument that the utility is trying to make the traffic look like normal YouTube traffic)?
        judge2020 5y ago
        Youtube proper does a lot of JS, eg. a view is usually only counted after ~30 seconds[0] and does other things like logging the current timecode so that it can return to that time in case the user clicks off the video and returns to it later[1]. 0: https://www.tubics.com/blog/what-counts-as-a-view-on-youtube/#:~:text=The%20user%20watches%20it%20on%20the%20platform%20for%C2%A0at%20least%2030%20seconds https://www.tubics.com/blog/what-counts-as-a-view-on-youtube.... 1: https://i.judge.sh/rare/Cherry/chrome_H0p9bAoLgy.png https://i.judge.sh/rare/Cherry/chrome_H0p9bAoLgy.png the red line is how far in i've watched.
        corobo 5y ago
        If the actual video URL is somehow grabbable from the API you might miss whatever triggers a +1 view from the website in theory
      - banana_giraffe 5y ago
        It does, it shows up as a "Other YouTube features" for the source. Though, YouTube seems to do some aggressive deduping here, if I download from 5 different IPs, excluding the IP I'm logged into YouTube's services, I see 5 views. If I download 50 times from one IP, I see one view.
        crtasm 5y ago
        Good to know, thanks for the correction!
    - judge2020 5y ago
      Sponsors might ask for some of the creator's analytics, eg. raid: shadow legends probably isn't going to sponsor channels that have very low mobile viewership compared to desktop. There are also paid analytics tools, eg. VidIQ, which can make good guesses about some metrics.
  - matheusmoreira 5y ago
    So what? Let creators figure out their business model. That's their job. We DO NOT want to look at ads. If their solution is ads, we'll block them. When are they gonna understand this?
- kaladin-jasnah 5y ago
  I think for some us pro-sponsor-segment people, I feel like regular ads are particularly dry and more of an "assault." But sponsor segments... can be creative, funny, and sometimes make me actually want to buy the product (...not the generic Raid: Shadow Legends ones... but even those if they're well done). I appreciate well-made ads, so I don't mind sponsor segments. Here's an example of one that is... nonsensical and perhaps a bit humorous (well, at least I liked it): https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0jPLRtEEjhU https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0jPLRtEEjhU
  - Ansil849 5y ago
    > I appreciate well-made ads, so I don't mind sponsor segments. Then don't use the sponsor segment removal portion of the tool. Simple as that. Those of us who don't want "clever" advertising any more than "annoying" advertising can use it. And that's that.
  - kelnos 5y ago
    I watch a video for whatever topic the video title and description leads me to expect I'm going to hear about. A sponsorship segment, no matter how "clever", is still an ad. > But sponsor segments... sometimes make me actually want to buy the product That's exactly what I don't want: more sophisticated psychological manipulation that gets me to buy more stuff.
  - corobo 5y ago
    > sometimes make me actually want to buy the product Yes this is why we dislike them (other than time wasting) I don't want to be manipulated into buying crap, I'm good enough doing that myself
  - BeFlatXIII 5y ago
    The only time I don’t smash the fast-forward button during podcast ads is during the Unmade Podcast. They actually manage to continue the show’s conversation while they promote Hover and Story Blocks. It also means that sometimes their ad slots (as defined by the time between “and now a word from this episode’s sponsor” and “thank you very much for supporting this episode”) can be over seven minutes at times.
- nerdponx 5y ago
  Maybe these creators should post sponsor-free versions of their videos on Patreon? If you are watching for free, and you're that annoyed by ads, then maybe you just feel entitled.
  - deleted 5y ago
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  - Ansil849 5y ago
    > If you are watching for free, and you're that annoyed by ads, then maybe you just feel entitled. If the the content is there, I'll watch it; if it's not, I won't. I certainly don't feel entitled to it. If anything, the sense of entitlement seems to be emanating firmly from the people who upload the videos: they seem to think that because they upload videos, they are entitled to make money from them. Sorry, no.
- JKCalhoun 5y ago
  I'll add another wrinkle: I like content-creators that create for the love of doing it and not to try and turn it into a business. When I follow a YouRuber (I'm borrowing that typo, I like it) and have seen them descend into the paid/promotional arena, I have been turned off and stopped subscribing to their channel. Advertising tends to naturally weed out, for me, the ones who are not as passionate about what they do. Sorry if this model is counter to YT's business model. Better: if you want to make a business out of it, sell plans like WoodenGears guy, or kits like Ben Eater.
  - AkBKukU 5y ago
    Preface: I am a Youtuber who prefers not to do sponsored segments but has done some in the past. > Advertising tends to naturally weed out, for me, the ones who are not as passionate about what they do. This is a remark I see over and over again, basically "You're only in it for the money" once you do sponsors. Here's the thing that no one really gets, Youtube is not a hobby. I don't care what the channel topic is, building cars, lathe projects, tech reviews, pets, etc. The hobby for the creator is the subject, not the video production platform or process. Youtube is not social media, we're not posting videos so our friends can see what we're up to. The entire system is built completely differently from something like facebook, twitter, instgram, etc. It requires actual work. Planning videos, making thumbnails, responding to comments from strangers, making business connections, and more when you get larger. "Making videos" themselves isn't just waving a camera around while you do something either and requires it's own thought and effort. Anyone who has reasonable success on Youtube can be monetarily rewarded for that. That alone creates an expectation that it could possibly be a source of income from the outset. If you can achieve making it a sustainable income source capable of being lived off of, why wouldn't you? You can continue to do and build upon your actual hobby, whatever it is. But instead of working a different "conventional" job you do video production, PR, marketing, and potentially advertising. The problem is that the on platform advertisement revenue is not enough to cover the effort and resources required to make videos as you become more serious about it. Part of this is on viewers because Youtube knows if you are using adblock. I can see this on the back end, on average for my channel less than 50% of views are monetized. So if nobody used adblock I could make literally double the amount on just the on platform ads alone. But that's not how it is and it's not going to change. So you have to do something else as well. Personally, as a Youtuber, I see two revenue paths. You either go crowd funded with something like Patreon or do sponsors. You can do both but unless it's well done and relevant it feels like double dipping to me. But the in video sponsors aren't any different than the other advertisements on platform on youtube, except they aren't blocked by adblock. (Youtubers properly disclosing the ads is a completely separate issue that should not besmirch everyone who does it.) Youtubers don't get to choose their sponsor partners unless they are gigantic and have to take what they can get. We get tons of spam offers that try to screw us, taking real ones from even slightly reputable companies can make a big impact. Youtubers should do a better job of picking them, but not everybody understands something like what a VPN actually is and how is just moves your endpoint to a different set of private hands. But advertising is tied to media and not new at all. Complaining about a slightly more effective version of it is just naivety about how the service works and what the people who make the videos do. TL;DR: Youtube is not a hobby, the subject Youtubers talk about is. Youtube is a job that takes real work, but it can't pay well enough, partly because of adblock. In video sponsors are just a different ad method that directly pays bypassing the adblock problem. PS: I do not use adblock, partly because it feels hypocritical to make money on ads and then block them for others. The internet is indeed annoying without it, but I manage just fine.
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  Yeah! Why do people think this is acceptable? It boggles my mind.
- puchatek 5y ago
  You conveniently skipped the rest of his comment which was really the important part... There is no need to state the obvious. Nobody would miss any kind of advertisement in the media they consume but that doesn't answer how content creators are supposed to be compensated for the effort they put in.
banana_giraffe 5y ago
For me, yes, they're bad. I get it's not the end of the world, but a lot of the ad copy in sponsor segments really grates on me, like VPN ones. I try to get rid of ads from my life where I can, this is part of it. And for me, a lot of the videos I download are played back, audio only, while I go for walks or am otherwise away from the Internet. YouTube lets you download videos, but my audio comes from multiple sources, YouTube is just one source. I can integrate yt-dlp into my feed reader so I don't need to think about the source anymore than I need to worry about going to a random podcast's website to listen to those. In the end though, a tool like SponsorBlock is just another way I remove the annoyances from the modern Internet.
- arghwhat 5y ago
  Ugh, the blatant lies in VPN ads. "MAKES IT SO YOUR ISP CAN'T SEE YOUR TRAFFIC" - yeah, congrats, now it's just another ISP that sees your traffic, which was probably protected by TLS anyway... Heck, they even keep recommending the utility of Terms of Service violations like accessing contents from other regions. VPN companies are scammy as hell.
  - skinkestek 5y ago
    > Heck, they even keep recommending the utility of Terms of Service violations like accessing contents from other regions. You mean helping helpless US companies who doesn't understand that Europeans can understand English? Or actually get the full database of movies when we pay the full price for Netflix? Yeah, shame on us. PS: I don't use VPNs to access Netflix, I just don't care to look at it anymore and one day I'll cancel it. No way I want to pay for the new stuff. Edit: disagreement is acceptable but I'd like to see an explanation if possible.
    - arghwhat 5y ago
      Not that I personally care if individuals violate terms of service, but using that in a sales pitch seems akin to advertising for piracy services. Abiding by the terms of the agreement which you enter into with the company providing the service is a requirement to continue service and/or avoid liability, irrespective of whether it includes completely idiotic and archaic business practices and irrespective of whether this causes harm. And yes, I also find Netflix to have extremely limited value. This isn't the right way to overturn stupidity.
lawl 5y ago
> Are the sponsor parts really so bad? To me not only is it easy to skip, I want indie people to make enough money to produce high quality content; otherwise media is just what a few biggies want to fund. In my experience, it's the same with ads everywhere else. It (usually) starts out not being overly obnoxious, with just a "this video is sponsored by [garbage tier mobile game/earphones/vpn/whatever] more about them at the end of the video" and then the pitch at the end. I don't mind these. They quickly get the name out at the beginning and then don't interrupt the video. What really annoys me are the ones that interrupt the video. At some point a few of them annoyed me enough that I installed SponsorBlock. Because I don't want to hear or see these ads, but i tolerated them. But once that threshold is crossed where I don't tolerate all of them anymore, why would I not just block all of them? I'm not going to unblock specific channels that are well-behaved to listen to ads for products i will definitely never buy. It's the exact same thing with regular ad-blocking. Sometimes when I'm on a fresh OS I start browsing the web and only notice I don't have an adblocker once I visit a page with super obnoxious ads (e.g. google on mobile and realize there's only ads and no organic results for like the first 5 screens).
- input_sh 5y ago
  > What really annoys me are the ones that interrupt the video. Especially when those interruptions take two minutes. I don't mind them up to 30 seconds, but their length does get pretty ridiculous from time to time. There's no medium that's gonna make watch two minutes ad without looking away or trying to skip it. You either sell it quickly or don't.
- azinman2 5y ago
  But what then do you think is a realistic alternative? YouTube costing $20/mo or more? Can’t watch videos without a patron? If your answer is nothing — I expect everything for free, then that’s both unrealistic and parasitic.
  - varelse 5y ago
    Easy: a downloader that makes it look like you've watched those stupid commercials, but you actually haven't and you're back to the original video. Let the sponsors beware.
kortilla 5y ago
Yes, they are just ads in an even worse form because it’s not clear when to skip to to pass over them.
- JKCalhoun 5y ago
  Like how all the wood-workers on YouTube have $1K Festool track saws and $4K SawStop table saws.
ithinkso 5y ago
'This video was sponsored by X' is ok. And that is ho... 'HEY! Don't forget to check out X!' is not
ajdude 5y ago
I always remember the HN comment[0] where developer explained which video was the breaking point that pushed them into creating this app, and it was kurzgesagt of all authors. I am personally wondering if Yourube themselves are going to start implementing some thing like this sooner or later; after all, you are paying for an ad free experience on YouTube premium, just to watch all of those new videos become filled with in-video advertisements. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20781415 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20781415
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  Holy shit. Kurzgesagt of all things, indeed. It's the one channel where I could actually stand their sponsor section. Most other channels I know do much worse. But I guess the video referenced was kind of low, surprisingly low.
- gizdan 5y ago
  > I am personally wondering if Yourube themselves are going to start implementing some thing like this sooner or later; after all, you are paying for an ad free experience on YouTube premium, just to watch all of those new videos become filled with in-video advertisements. Unlikely. It requires monitoring content and ensuring they people add (correct) timestamps for sponsored content. This would need to be verified by YouTube moderators and in general requires a lot more resources than you think. Crowdsourcing like SponsorBlock is feasible but it's unlikely that YouTube will integrate SponsorBlock into the site.
sen 5y ago
I pay for YouTube premium but still see them. That’s not OK, especially when the creators make 10x more money off YouTube Premium users than from ad-based users. YouTube needs to make a way for creators to label the sponsor sections and it skips it for Premium users. As for why downloading, I download any/every video I find useful so I don’t have to go back to YouTube to watch it later. Everything from blender tutorials to car build videos that taught me something to music video clips and generally just anything interesting. It all goes to my NAS and I can instantly pull it up for reference and scrub quicker and don’t have to deal with YouTube’s increasingly annoying website.
- sbarre 5y ago
  > YouTube needs to make a way for creators to label the sponsor sections and it skips it for Premium users. I have read that more and more creators use sponsored segments because that pays much better than YT revshare.. So they may not care about the Premium user experience as much, and if Premium lets people skip sponsored segements, that might drive down the overall segment viewership, AND increase Premium subscribers and then it's a lose-lose for the creator since those segments will be less and less valuable to the sponsor.
  - sen 5y ago
    They're talking about the free ad-watching type users. It's been published by multiple creators that YT Premium is easily their biggest income stream but there's just very very few people willing to pay Premium (for most creators it's like 1-2% or less). If YouTube made it more appealing to buy Premium, eg by letting you block sponsored segments, download videos easily, etc etc... everyone would win.
    - sbarre 5y ago
      I’ve heard the opposite, that people don’t really see a bump from premium. While I’m sure it’s different for every creator I would be curious to see the math. But you may be right.
- saghm 5y ago
peoplefromibiza 5y ago
not per se. but if you are like me and watch a lot of curated playlists, you end up watching the same sponsor segments over and over. it's like watching anime on primevideo without hitting the skip intro button it gets annoying pretty soon.
CraneWorm 5y ago
I just want the advertisers to burn money paying for content I watch, but I don't want to see the ads. That, or post-scarcity to finally happen, whichever cones first :). I would be fine with adblock that fakes that I saw the ad without me having to wait for it to buffer.
krick 5y ago
Bad? No, not really. If you ask me, (almost?) nothing is inherently bad. But it's a nice and obvious feature to skip them if you want, so it's pretty amazing that such options are possible now. (However, I don't think I'll use it, because there is an mpv plugin for that, and it feels pretty weird, to actually skip parts of the video when downloading. I mean, what if I'll need it one time: do I have to re-download the video?)
matheusmoreira 5y ago
> Are the sponsor parts really so bad? All marketing is bad. It's essentially mindhacking. > I want indie people to make enough money to produce high quality content If people have something to say, they will say it whether they get paid for it or not. That's what I want. Real opinions from real people. Not some sponsored content you can't trust is real. > otherwise media is just what a few biggies want to fund It already is. All they have to do to lose funding is say or do something those sponsors don't like.
chalupaman 5y ago
For me, the issue is that overwhelmingly the sponsor blocks are for products and services not available in or relevant to my country. Unlike the regular ads loaded through YouTube, they can’t be customized based on the viewer’s region. They will just assume that viewers of English-language content are in the USA, mostly. When you subtract mobile games, which I don’t play, I would say that maybe 1 in 20 of them are things I could buy even if I wanted to. So it just feels pointless, they see no benefit from my seeing the sponsorships and it wastes my time. As for what sponsored content people are streaming: where I live Internet providers provide unlimited bandwidth during off peak hours (midnight to 8AM) but give you a monthly data limit outside those hours. If you are in an area not wired for high-speed internet, you might be relying on 4G which can have a monthly limit of as little as 50 GB… which isn’t much at all for a family. So it’s nice to be able to queue up all the videos you want to watch to download overnight, making the answer “everything/anything.” (And that is the chief use of YouTube-DL for me. YouTube premium lets you save videos to watch offline, but only on mobile devices —- which typically have little storage for them —- and you can’t schedule it, you’d have to get up at midnight to manually select each video. With YouTube-DL I can schedule downloads of all my subscriptions and bookmarks to a nice big hard drive and then automatically put my PC to sleep.)
xmprt 5y ago
I usually see sponsorships for products that I already know about. If it's a creator's first sponsorship or if it's a new product (I check the description links to see) then I watch it through but otherwise, it's a massive waste of time to sit through a bunch 1 minute sponsorship in the middle of a 10 minute video.
nextlevelwizard 5y ago
If the products where A) relevant B) good. How many youtubers have you seen shilling out raid shadow legends? They all praise it like it's the next coming of Jesus while everyone knows that the game is absolute garbage. How many times will I get ad for NordVPN? Why would I use such a widely known and blocked VPN for streaming services? It is literal noob trap. Worst is the reybud or whatever ear buds. Everyone says how good they sound and how amazing they are, but realistically if a brand comes out of nowhere with no other products what are the chances that they are good or even decent? All of these are terrible sponsor ads for me. All they do is annoy me and waste my time. At least many video makers I follow have the decency to somehow indicate in the video how long the ad will go on so it is easier to skip. Only reason I don't use the automatic extension is that anyone can mark any segment of any video as an ad and it will be automatically skipped and I don't like that idea. Maybe if it was just some friends who I trust.
grapist420 5y ago
I’m not gonna buy your headphones or VPN or “online course”, and I skip over them whenever possible. So no point in seeing them.
aaaaaaaaaaab 5y ago
I never buy anything based on ads, so it makes no difference for the advertiser whether I remove the sponsored part or not, they won’t see a dime from me either way.
TeMPOraL 5y ago
> Are the sponsor parts really so bad? To me not only is it easy to skip Well, yes. Skipping involves effort. If I wanted to engage my hands with the content, I would've opted for a book, not a video. Anyway, actual sponsor parts I can stand. They're at least somewhat interesting, by virtue of being unexpected. Like, who is this video sponsored by this time? Or, why this well-known and otherwise respected science/technology video vlogger keeps advertising scummy VPN services? What I can't stand is the "like and subscribe" dance. It's just completely mind-dumbing. Yes, I know you have a Patreon, it's in the video description. Yes, I know where the stupid "bell icon" is, I don't need unsolicited YouTube UI 101 lessons. No, I'm not going to click anyway, because I'm here for a particular video, not the whole channel.
- Popegaf 5y ago
  Considering the current system and real options that they have right now, what are they supposed to do if they want to earn money (or even a living) making videos that will make you happy? Perhaps more importantly, would you give them money?
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    Well... > what are they supposed to do if they want to earn money (or even a living) making videos that will make you happy Make me happy? It's simple: don't do videos for a living. If you have something interesting to say, say it, and put a PayPal link (or Patreon, if you discover that you regularly have something interesting to say). If you don't have anything interesting to say, just don't do the video. I'm not gonna watch it anyway. But that's just me, really. There's no good answer to your question, because for me, the moment a YouTuber wants to do videos in order to make money (or a living), I don't want to watch them anymore. Under the current system, they're creating a huge conflict of interest for themselves - monetizing views through advertising is in direct opposition to delivering quality and trustworthy content. Almost all ways to improve engagement degrade the value delivered to the viewer. I'd be more comfortable with creators doubling down on Patron and one-time donations. Even the merch[0]. "I make this stuff for as long as I can afford it, want to help, send me money" is a honest deal. So is a paywall, but that's tougher to implement on the Internet. > Perhaps more importantly, would you give them money? Yes, I would and I do. I subscribe to a bunch of Patreons, occasionally buy stuff from creators or send them direct donations. But not for everything, of course. That's the nature of the market. A random video I got linked to is worth $0 to me until I finish watching it, and after I'm done, it's hard to price. -- [0] - Though I seldom buy any, and really dislike the concept. Most merch is a waste of matter and energy used to create it; it exists only to break through people's reluctance to spend money on intangible content, but at the cost of most money being lost in making and shipping stuff that will end up in a landfill after a short dust-gathering break at some viewer's home. I hate these sorts of "hacks" for human psyche, but I see why they're needed. There's also a conflict of interest here too - the videos could become just a vector for peddling merch. But so far, I haven't seen any YouTube creator falling into that trap - unlike ad monetization, which affects everyone.
Popegaf 5y ago
While watching live, probably not, but once downloaded they lose value, don't they?
MrGilbert 5y ago
> Are the sponsor parts really so bad? It depends. Some Creators get pretty creative with their sponsor blocks. JayzTwoCents comes to mind with his "iFixit" ad - it's hilarous every time it appears.
httpsterio 5y ago
Some people, like Internet Historian puts some effort in and the sponsor segments are actually entertaining and I don't mind watching those. Some people also do the quick shout out that takes some 10 seconds and they're fine too. I also watch some meme compilations with my SO and they're usually pretty different. I appreciate that compiling those memes into one video is for the convenience of the viewer but the original video creators don't benefit from those, only the ones making the compilations so I don't want to support that. On top of that, there are some channels that have several minutes long product ads inside the video, not the normal YouTube adverts. I simply hate those.
anshumankmr 5y ago
There is only a certain number of times a person can watch a video where the creator mentions they are sponsored by Raid Shadow Legends before a person will go mad.
sildur 5y ago
It is unnecessary filler that will also get stale pretty quickly. I archive videos, and the ads would be obsolete in less than 10 years.
- esyir 5y ago
  An archivist might want to keep both the original and an integration that strips the sponsor
  - detaro 5y ago
    Is there a way of attaching cut instructions to a video file that players recognize?
    - Stephen304 5y ago
      You could do something like how comchap works and just mark ads / ad breaks with chapters in the video file.
j1elo 5y ago
At first I saw the sponsor segments, later it became too repetitive so I started doing the double-touch action (skip 10 or 20 seconds forward) when a video would start talking once again about the VPN service of the month (really, it seems to always be VPN services!), and later I ended up having to actually pause the video, scroll forward even a couple minutes (some sponsor segments have gone wild in duration lately). Then I started using[1] SponsorBlock, and now we're back at square 0. [1]: I had known about it for a long time but didn't feel like using it, until I did (or you can see it as "they made me feel like using it"...)
globular-toast 5y ago
It doesn't make any difference to the channel whether you watch the sponsored segment or not. If you want to archive some videos then sponsored segments are just a waste of space. I archive any useful information that I intend to use. For example, an instructional video showing how to repair my car.
rsanek 5y ago
Ads are a terrible monetization model and I will never willingly consume them. What was wrong with the original model of supporting artists via patronage anyway? Now with platforms like Patreon it's very simple to set up.

Ansil849 5y ago

> Are the sponsor parts really so bad? Yes. Some of us don't like being assaulted with sales pitches everywhere we look.

judge2020 5y ago
Sure, but creators don’t have many other avenues for revenue when you’re already using YouTube-dl(p) to download videos without watching ads. I imagine sponsor spots will be devalued over time as sponsorblock usage continues to grow, especially for creators with audiences that watch content on desktop more than mobile.
- Forbo 5y ago
  Is it apparent to the sponsor when someone is watching using youtube-dlp versus a regular view? I'd imagine most sponsored segments are negotiated based on subscriber count or view numbers.
  - crtasm 5y ago
    I don't believe the view counter gets incremented when using any unofficial front-end/downloader.
    - boolemancer 5y ago
      How would Google's backend know whether the traffic comes from their own frontend vs a utility like youtube-dl (assume for the sake of argument that the utility is trying to make the traffic look like normal YouTube traffic)?
      - judge2020 5y ago
        Youtube proper does a lot of JS, eg. a view is usually only counted after ~30 seconds[0] and does other things like logging the current timecode so that it can return to that time in case the user clicks off the video and returns to it later[1]. 0: https://www.tubics.com/blog/what-counts-as-a-view-on-youtube/#:~:text=The%20user%20watches%20it%20on%20the%20platform%20for%C2%A0at%20least%2030%20seconds https://www.tubics.com/blog/what-counts-as-a-view-on-youtube.... 1: https://i.judge.sh/rare/Cherry/chrome_H0p9bAoLgy.png https://i.judge.sh/rare/Cherry/chrome_H0p9bAoLgy.png the red line is how far in i've watched.
      - corobo 5y ago
        If the actual video URL is somehow grabbable from the API you might miss whatever triggers a +1 view from the website in theory
    - banana_giraffe 5y ago
      It does, it shows up as a "Other YouTube features" for the source. Though, YouTube seems to do some aggressive deduping here, if I download from 5 different IPs, excluding the IP I'm logged into YouTube's services, I see 5 views. If I download 50 times from one IP, I see one view.
      - crtasm 5y ago
        Good to know, thanks for the correction!
  - judge2020 5y ago
    Sponsors might ask for some of the creator's analytics, eg. raid: shadow legends probably isn't going to sponsor channels that have very low mobile viewership compared to desktop. There are also paid analytics tools, eg. VidIQ, which can make good guesses about some metrics.
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  So what? Let creators figure out their business model. That's their job. We DO NOT want to look at ads. If their solution is ads, we'll block them. When are they gonna understand this?
kaladin-jasnah 5y ago
I think for some us pro-sponsor-segment people, I feel like regular ads are particularly dry and more of an "assault." But sponsor segments... can be creative, funny, and sometimes make me actually want to buy the product (...not the generic Raid: Shadow Legends ones... but even those if they're well done). I appreciate well-made ads, so I don't mind sponsor segments. Here's an example of one that is... nonsensical and perhaps a bit humorous (well, at least I liked it): https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0jPLRtEEjhU https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0jPLRtEEjhU
- Ansil849 5y ago
  > I appreciate well-made ads, so I don't mind sponsor segments. Then don't use the sponsor segment removal portion of the tool. Simple as that. Those of us who don't want "clever" advertising any more than "annoying" advertising can use it. And that's that.
- kelnos 5y ago
  I watch a video for whatever topic the video title and description leads me to expect I'm going to hear about. A sponsorship segment, no matter how "clever", is still an ad. > But sponsor segments... sometimes make me actually want to buy the product That's exactly what I don't want: more sophisticated psychological manipulation that gets me to buy more stuff.
- corobo 5y ago
  > sometimes make me actually want to buy the product Yes this is why we dislike them (other than time wasting) I don't want to be manipulated into buying crap, I'm good enough doing that myself
- BeFlatXIII 5y ago
  The only time I don’t smash the fast-forward button during podcast ads is during the Unmade Podcast. They actually manage to continue the show’s conversation while they promote Hover and Story Blocks. It also means that sometimes their ad slots (as defined by the time between “and now a word from this episode’s sponsor” and “thank you very much for supporting this episode”) can be over seven minutes at times.
nerdponx 5y ago
Maybe these creators should post sponsor-free versions of their videos on Patreon? If you are watching for free, and you're that annoyed by ads, then maybe you just feel entitled.
- deleted 5y ago
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- deleted 5y ago
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- Ansil849 5y ago
  > If you are watching for free, and you're that annoyed by ads, then maybe you just feel entitled. If the the content is there, I'll watch it; if it's not, I won't. I certainly don't feel entitled to it. If anything, the sense of entitlement seems to be emanating firmly from the people who upload the videos: they seem to think that because they upload videos, they are entitled to make money from them. Sorry, no.
JKCalhoun 5y ago
I'll add another wrinkle: I like content-creators that create for the love of doing it and not to try and turn it into a business. When I follow a YouRuber (I'm borrowing that typo, I like it) and have seen them descend into the paid/promotional arena, I have been turned off and stopped subscribing to their channel. Advertising tends to naturally weed out, for me, the ones who are not as passionate about what they do. Sorry if this model is counter to YT's business model. Better: if you want to make a business out of it, sell plans like WoodenGears guy, or kits like Ben Eater.
- AkBKukU 5y ago
  Preface: I am a Youtuber who prefers not to do sponsored segments but has done some in the past. > Advertising tends to naturally weed out, for me, the ones who are not as passionate about what they do. This is a remark I see over and over again, basically "You're only in it for the money" once you do sponsors. Here's the thing that no one really gets, Youtube is not a hobby. I don't care what the channel topic is, building cars, lathe projects, tech reviews, pets, etc. The hobby for the creator is the subject, not the video production platform or process. Youtube is not social media, we're not posting videos so our friends can see what we're up to. The entire system is built completely differently from something like facebook, twitter, instgram, etc. It requires actual work. Planning videos, making thumbnails, responding to comments from strangers, making business connections, and more when you get larger. "Making videos" themselves isn't just waving a camera around while you do something either and requires it's own thought and effort. Anyone who has reasonable success on Youtube can be monetarily rewarded for that. That alone creates an expectation that it could possibly be a source of income from the outset. If you can achieve making it a sustainable income source capable of being lived off of, why wouldn't you? You can continue to do and build upon your actual hobby, whatever it is. But instead of working a different "conventional" job you do video production, PR, marketing, and potentially advertising. The problem is that the on platform advertisement revenue is not enough to cover the effort and resources required to make videos as you become more serious about it. Part of this is on viewers because Youtube knows if you are using adblock. I can see this on the back end, on average for my channel less than 50% of views are monetized. So if nobody used adblock I could make literally double the amount on just the on platform ads alone. But that's not how it is and it's not going to change. So you have to do something else as well. Personally, as a Youtuber, I see two revenue paths. You either go crowd funded with something like Patreon or do sponsors. You can do both but unless it's well done and relevant it feels like double dipping to me. But the in video sponsors aren't any different than the other advertisements on platform on youtube, except they aren't blocked by adblock. (Youtubers properly disclosing the ads is a completely separate issue that should not besmirch everyone who does it.) Youtubers don't get to choose their sponsor partners unless they are gigantic and have to take what they can get. We get tons of spam offers that try to screw us, taking real ones from even slightly reputable companies can make a big impact. Youtubers should do a better job of picking them, but not everybody understands something like what a VPN actually is and how is just moves your endpoint to a different set of private hands. But advertising is tied to media and not new at all. Complaining about a slightly more effective version of it is just naivety about how the service works and what the people who make the videos do. TL;DR: Youtube is not a hobby, the subject Youtubers talk about is. Youtube is a job that takes real work, but it can't pay well enough, partly because of adblock. In video sponsors are just a different ad method that directly pays bypassing the adblock problem. PS: I do not use adblock, partly because it feels hypocritical to make money on ads and then block them for others. The internet is indeed annoying without it, but I manage just fine.
matheusmoreira 5y ago
Yeah! Why do people think this is acceptable? It boggles my mind.
puchatek 5y ago
You conveniently skipped the rest of his comment which was really the important part... There is no need to state the obvious. Nobody would miss any kind of advertisement in the media they consume but that doesn't answer how content creators are supposed to be compensated for the effort they put in.

banana_giraffe 5y ago

For me, yes, they're bad. I get it's not the end of the world, but a lot of the ad copy in sponsor segments really grates on me, like VPN ones. I try to get rid of ads from my life where I can, this is part of it. And for me, a lot of the videos I download are played back, audio only, while I go for walks or am otherwise away from the Internet. YouTube lets you download videos, but my audio comes from multiple sources, YouTube is just one source. I can integrate yt-dlp into my feed reader so I don't need to think about the source anymore than I need to worry about going to a random podcast's website to listen to those. In the end though, a tool like SponsorBlock is just another way I remove the annoyances from the modern Internet.

arghwhat 5y ago
Ugh, the blatant lies in VPN ads. "MAKES IT SO YOUR ISP CAN'T SEE YOUR TRAFFIC" - yeah, congrats, now it's just another ISP that sees your traffic, which was probably protected by TLS anyway... Heck, they even keep recommending the utility of Terms of Service violations like accessing contents from other regions. VPN companies are scammy as hell.
- skinkestek 5y ago
  > Heck, they even keep recommending the utility of Terms of Service violations like accessing contents from other regions. You mean helping helpless US companies who doesn't understand that Europeans can understand English? Or actually get the full database of movies when we pay the full price for Netflix? Yeah, shame on us. PS: I don't use VPNs to access Netflix, I just don't care to look at it anymore and one day I'll cancel it. No way I want to pay for the new stuff. Edit: disagreement is acceptable but I'd like to see an explanation if possible.
  - arghwhat 5y ago
    Not that I personally care if individuals violate terms of service, but using that in a sales pitch seems akin to advertising for piracy services. Abiding by the terms of the agreement which you enter into with the company providing the service is a requirement to continue service and/or avoid liability, irrespective of whether it includes completely idiotic and archaic business practices and irrespective of whether this causes harm. And yes, I also find Netflix to have extremely limited value. This isn't the right way to overturn stupidity.

lawl 5y ago

> Are the sponsor parts really so bad? To me not only is it easy to skip, I want indie people to make enough money to produce high quality content; otherwise media is just what a few biggies want to fund. In my experience, it's the same with ads everywhere else. It (usually) starts out not being overly obnoxious, with just a "this video is sponsored by [garbage tier mobile game/earphones/vpn/whatever] more about them at the end of the video" and then the pitch at the end. I don't mind these. They quickly get the name out at the beginning and then don't interrupt the video. What really annoys me are the ones that interrupt the video. At some point a few of them annoyed me enough that I installed SponsorBlock. Because I don't want to hear or see these ads, but i tolerated them. But once that threshold is crossed where I don't tolerate all of them anymore, why would I not just block all of them? I'm not going to unblock specific channels that are well-behaved to listen to ads for products i will definitely never buy. It's the exact same thing with regular ad-blocking. Sometimes when I'm on a fresh OS I start browsing the web and only notice I don't have an adblocker once I visit a page with super obnoxious ads (e.g. google on mobile and realize there's only ads and no organic results for like the first 5 screens).

input_sh 5y ago
> What really annoys me are the ones that interrupt the video. Especially when those interruptions take two minutes. I don't mind them up to 30 seconds, but their length does get pretty ridiculous from time to time. There's no medium that's gonna make watch two minutes ad without looking away or trying to skip it. You either sell it quickly or don't.
azinman2 5y ago
But what then do you think is a realistic alternative? YouTube costing $20/mo or more? Can’t watch videos without a patron? If your answer is nothing — I expect everything for free, then that’s both unrealistic and parasitic.
- varelse 5y ago
  Easy: a downloader that makes it look like you've watched those stupid commercials, but you actually haven't and you're back to the original video. Let the sponsors beware.

kortilla 5y ago

Yes, they are just ads in an even worse form because it’s not clear when to skip to to pass over them.

JKCalhoun 5y ago
Like how all the wood-workers on YouTube have $1K Festool track saws and $4K SawStop table saws.

ithinkso 5y ago

'This video was sponsored by X' is ok. And that is ho... 'HEY! Don't forget to check out X!' is not

ajdude 5y ago

I always remember the HN comment[0] where developer explained which video was the breaking point that pushed them into creating this app, and it was kurzgesagt of all authors. I am personally wondering if Yourube themselves are going to start implementing some thing like this sooner or later; after all, you are paying for an ad free experience on YouTube premium, just to watch all of those new videos become filled with in-video advertisements. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20781415 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20781415

TeMPOraL 5y ago
Holy shit. Kurzgesagt of all things, indeed. It's the one channel where I could actually stand their sponsor section. Most other channels I know do much worse. But I guess the video referenced was kind of low, surprisingly low.
gizdan 5y ago
> I am personally wondering if Yourube themselves are going to start implementing some thing like this sooner or later; after all, you are paying for an ad free experience on YouTube premium, just to watch all of those new videos become filled with in-video advertisements. Unlikely. It requires monitoring content and ensuring they people add (correct) timestamps for sponsored content. This would need to be verified by YouTube moderators and in general requires a lot more resources than you think. Crowdsourcing like SponsorBlock is feasible but it's unlikely that YouTube will integrate SponsorBlock into the site.

sen 5y ago

I pay for YouTube premium but still see them. That’s not OK, especially when the creators make 10x more money off YouTube Premium users than from ad-based users. YouTube needs to make a way for creators to label the sponsor sections and it skips it for Premium users. As for why downloading, I download any/every video I find useful so I don’t have to go back to YouTube to watch it later. Everything from blender tutorials to car build videos that taught me something to music video clips and generally just anything interesting. It all goes to my NAS and I can instantly pull it up for reference and scrub quicker and don’t have to deal with YouTube’s increasingly annoying website.

sbarre 5y ago
> YouTube needs to make a way for creators to label the sponsor sections and it skips it for Premium users. I have read that more and more creators use sponsored segments because that pays much better than YT revshare.. So they may not care about the Premium user experience as much, and if Premium lets people skip sponsored segements, that might drive down the overall segment viewership, AND increase Premium subscribers and then it's a lose-lose for the creator since those segments will be less and less valuable to the sponsor.
- sen 5y ago
  They're talking about the free ad-watching type users. It's been published by multiple creators that YT Premium is easily their biggest income stream but there's just very very few people willing to pay Premium (for most creators it's like 1-2% or less). If YouTube made it more appealing to buy Premium, eg by letting you block sponsored segments, download videos easily, etc etc... everyone would win.
  - sbarre 5y ago
    I’ve heard the opposite, that people don’t really see a bump from premium. While I’m sure it’s different for every creator I would be curious to see the math. But you may be right.
saghm 5y ago

peoplefromibiza 5y ago

not per se. but if you are like me and watch a lot of curated playlists, you end up watching the same sponsor segments over and over. it's like watching anime on primevideo without hitting the skip intro button it gets annoying pretty soon.

CraneWorm 5y ago

I just want the advertisers to burn money paying for content I watch, but I don't want to see the ads. That, or post-scarcity to finally happen, whichever cones first :). I would be fine with adblock that fakes that I saw the ad without me having to wait for it to buffer.

krick 5y ago

Bad? No, not really. If you ask me, (almost?) nothing is inherently bad. But it's a nice and obvious feature to skip them if you want, so it's pretty amazing that such options are possible now. (However, I don't think I'll use it, because there is an mpv plugin for that, and it feels pretty weird, to actually skip parts of the video when downloading. I mean, what if I'll need it one time: do I have to re-download the video?)

matheusmoreira 5y ago

> Are the sponsor parts really so bad? All marketing is bad. It's essentially mindhacking. > I want indie people to make enough money to produce high quality content If people have something to say, they will say it whether they get paid for it or not. That's what I want. Real opinions from real people. Not some sponsored content you can't trust is real. > otherwise media is just what a few biggies want to fund It already is. All they have to do to lose funding is say or do something those sponsors don't like.

chalupaman 5y ago

For me, the issue is that overwhelmingly the sponsor blocks are for products and services not available in or relevant to my country. Unlike the regular ads loaded through YouTube, they can’t be customized based on the viewer’s region. They will just assume that viewers of English-language content are in the USA, mostly. When you subtract mobile games, which I don’t play, I would say that maybe 1 in 20 of them are things I could buy even if I wanted to. So it just feels pointless, they see no benefit from my seeing the sponsorships and it wastes my time. As for what sponsored content people are streaming: where I live Internet providers provide unlimited bandwidth during off peak hours (midnight to 8AM) but give you a monthly data limit outside those hours. If you are in an area not wired for high-speed internet, you might be relying on 4G which can have a monthly limit of as little as 50 GB… which isn’t much at all for a family. So it’s nice to be able to queue up all the videos you want to watch to download overnight, making the answer “everything/anything.” (And that is the chief use of YouTube-DL for me. YouTube premium lets you save videos to watch offline, but only on mobile devices —- which typically have little storage for them —- and you can’t schedule it, you’d have to get up at midnight to manually select each video. With YouTube-DL I can schedule downloads of all my subscriptions and bookmarks to a nice big hard drive and then automatically put my PC to sleep.)

xmprt 5y ago

I usually see sponsorships for products that I already know about. If it's a creator's first sponsorship or if it's a new product (I check the description links to see) then I watch it through but otherwise, it's a massive waste of time to sit through a bunch 1 minute sponsorship in the middle of a 10 minute video.

nextlevelwizard 5y ago

If the products where A) relevant B) good. How many youtubers have you seen shilling out raid shadow legends? They all praise it like it's the next coming of Jesus while everyone knows that the game is absolute garbage. How many times will I get ad for NordVPN? Why would I use such a widely known and blocked VPN for streaming services? It is literal noob trap. Worst is the reybud or whatever ear buds. Everyone says how good they sound and how amazing they are, but realistically if a brand comes out of nowhere with no other products what are the chances that they are good or even decent? All of these are terrible sponsor ads for me. All they do is annoy me and waste my time. At least many video makers I follow have the decency to somehow indicate in the video how long the ad will go on so it is easier to skip. Only reason I don't use the automatic extension is that anyone can mark any segment of any video as an ad and it will be automatically skipped and I don't like that idea. Maybe if it was just some friends who I trust.

grapist420 5y ago

I’m not gonna buy your headphones or VPN or “online course”, and I skip over them whenever possible. So no point in seeing them.

aaaaaaaaaaab 5y ago

I never buy anything based on ads, so it makes no difference for the advertiser whether I remove the sponsored part or not, they won’t see a dime from me either way.

TeMPOraL 5y ago

> Are the sponsor parts really so bad? To me not only is it easy to skip Well, yes. Skipping involves effort. If I wanted to engage my hands with the content, I would've opted for a book, not a video. Anyway, actual sponsor parts I can stand. They're at least somewhat interesting, by virtue of being unexpected. Like, who is this video sponsored by this time? Or, why this well-known and otherwise respected science/technology video vlogger keeps advertising scummy VPN services? What I can't stand is the "like and subscribe" dance. It's just completely mind-dumbing. Yes, I know you have a Patreon, it's in the video description. Yes, I know where the stupid "bell icon" is, I don't need unsolicited YouTube UI 101 lessons. No, I'm not going to click anyway, because I'm here for a particular video, not the whole channel.

Popegaf 5y ago
Considering the current system and real options that they have right now, what are they supposed to do if they want to earn money (or even a living) making videos that will make you happy? Perhaps more importantly, would you give them money?
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  Well... > what are they supposed to do if they want to earn money (or even a living) making videos that will make you happy Make me happy? It's simple: don't do videos for a living. If you have something interesting to say, say it, and put a PayPal link (or Patreon, if you discover that you regularly have something interesting to say). If you don't have anything interesting to say, just don't do the video. I'm not gonna watch it anyway. But that's just me, really. There's no good answer to your question, because for me, the moment a YouTuber wants to do videos in order to make money (or a living), I don't want to watch them anymore. Under the current system, they're creating a huge conflict of interest for themselves - monetizing views through advertising is in direct opposition to delivering quality and trustworthy content. Almost all ways to improve engagement degrade the value delivered to the viewer. I'd be more comfortable with creators doubling down on Patron and one-time donations. Even the merch[0]. "I make this stuff for as long as I can afford it, want to help, send me money" is a honest deal. So is a paywall, but that's tougher to implement on the Internet. > Perhaps more importantly, would you give them money? Yes, I would and I do. I subscribe to a bunch of Patreons, occasionally buy stuff from creators or send them direct donations. But not for everything, of course. That's the nature of the market. A random video I got linked to is worth $0 to me until I finish watching it, and after I'm done, it's hard to price. -- [0] - Though I seldom buy any, and really dislike the concept. Most merch is a waste of matter and energy used to create it; it exists only to break through people's reluctance to spend money on intangible content, but at the cost of most money being lost in making and shipping stuff that will end up in a landfill after a short dust-gathering break at some viewer's home. I hate these sorts of "hacks" for human psyche, but I see why they're needed. There's also a conflict of interest here too - the videos could become just a vector for peddling merch. But so far, I haven't seen any YouTube creator falling into that trap - unlike ad monetization, which affects everyone.

Popegaf 5y ago

While watching live, probably not, but once downloaded they lose value, don't they?

MrGilbert 5y ago

> Are the sponsor parts really so bad? It depends. Some Creators get pretty creative with their sponsor blocks. JayzTwoCents comes to mind with his "iFixit" ad - it's hilarous every time it appears.

httpsterio 5y ago

Some people, like Internet Historian puts some effort in and the sponsor segments are actually entertaining and I don't mind watching those. Some people also do the quick shout out that takes some 10 seconds and they're fine too. I also watch some meme compilations with my SO and they're usually pretty different. I appreciate that compiling those memes into one video is for the convenience of the viewer but the original video creators don't benefit from those, only the ones making the compilations so I don't want to support that. On top of that, there are some channels that have several minutes long product ads inside the video, not the normal YouTube adverts. I simply hate those.

anshumankmr 5y ago

There is only a certain number of times a person can watch a video where the creator mentions they are sponsored by Raid Shadow Legends before a person will go mad.

sildur 5y ago

It is unnecessary filler that will also get stale pretty quickly. I archive videos, and the ads would be obsolete in less than 10 years.

esyir 5y ago
An archivist might want to keep both the original and an integration that strips the sponsor
- detaro 5y ago
  Is there a way of attaching cut instructions to a video file that players recognize?
  - Stephen304 5y ago
    You could do something like how comchap works and just mark ads / ad breaks with chapters in the video file.

j1elo 5y ago

At first I saw the sponsor segments, later it became too repetitive so I started doing the double-touch action (skip 10 or 20 seconds forward) when a video would start talking once again about the VPN service of the month (really, it seems to always be VPN services!), and later I ended up having to actually pause the video, scroll forward even a couple minutes (some sponsor segments have gone wild in duration lately). Then I started using[1] SponsorBlock, and now we're back at square 0. [1]: I had known about it for a long time but didn't feel like using it, until I did (or you can see it as "they made me feel like using it"...)

globular-toast 5y ago

It doesn't make any difference to the channel whether you watch the sponsored segment or not. If you want to archive some videos then sponsored segments are just a waste of space. I archive any useful information that I intend to use. For example, an instructional video showing how to repair my car.

rsanek 5y ago

Ads are a terrible monetization model and I will never willingly consume them. What was wrong with the original model of supporting artists via patronage anyway? Now with platforms like Patreon it's very simple to set up.