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I don't know how it is done for certain, but with absolute control of the client you could send any information back to Youtube that you wanted. So if all Youtu

I don't know how it is done for certain, but with absolute control of the client you could send any information back to Youtube that you wanted. So if all Youtube was requesting was that the minimal amount of time of ads be watched before playing the video you just tell them that you have. I'm sure it is getting far more complicated than this, but I suspect this is the basic idea of this back and forth arms race of ad blocking and adblock blocking and so forth.

10000truths 3y ago
If YouTube wants full control over the ads experience, they will have to splice the ad into the video stream itself, and block seeking requests until: 1. The entirety of the ad portion of the video stream has been successfully sent to the client 2. A length of time equivalent to the ad duration has passed A sufficiently advanced ad blocker would be able to block the ad, but you would still be forced to sit through several seconds of nothing before continuing with the video.
- Terr_ 3y ago
  They could also have some sort of "skip ahead by giving information about the ad you just partially watched" feature, although seems vulnerable to a sufficiently good bot. (Unless they make it so complicated that it only works for very engaged native speakers of a particular language.)
- gpm 3y ago
  If youtube did that then they would no longer be able to accurately measure the number of ad views... which probably would make both the advertisers and the video-creators mad sooner or later.
- fidotron 3y ago
  This is known as SSAI for server side ad insertion.
- nuancebydefault 3y ago
  That is my point, it's rather easy for youtube to only stream the data at 1x speed minus the ads duration. So it must be that YouTube allows/allowed ad blockers (and also tools like youtubedl) explicitly. At some point they must have thought: let's not allow things to go too far.

10000truths 3y ago

If YouTube wants full control over the ads experience, they will have to splice the ad into the video stream itself, and block seeking requests until: 1. The entirety of the ad portion of the video stream has been successfully sent to the client 2. A length of time equivalent to the ad duration has passed A sufficiently advanced ad blocker would be able to block the ad, but you would still be forced to sit through several seconds of nothing before continuing with the video.

Terr_ 3y ago
They could also have some sort of "skip ahead by giving information about the ad you just partially watched" feature, although seems vulnerable to a sufficiently good bot. (Unless they make it so complicated that it only works for very engaged native speakers of a particular language.)
gpm 3y ago
If youtube did that then they would no longer be able to accurately measure the number of ad views... which probably would make both the advertisers and the video-creators mad sooner or later.
fidotron 3y ago
This is known as SSAI for server side ad insertion.
nuancebydefault 3y ago
That is my point, it's rather easy for youtube to only stream the data at 1x speed minus the ads duration. So it must be that YouTube allows/allowed ad blockers (and also tools like youtubedl) explicitly. At some point they must have thought: let's not allow things to go too far.