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> blunt instrument like this is likely to kill off sponsorships as a whole That's the dream. Ads are a poison and a blight. Removing them is something many us

by erklik 2y ago

> blunt instrument like this is likely to kill off sponsorships as a whole That's the dream. Ads are a poison and a blight. Removing them is something many users, including me welcome. If one wants money for their videos, they're welcome to actually allow getting payments i.e. patreon, the "Youtube sponsorship"-thing.

noone_youknow 2y ago
Sure, I totally get that. I’m no fan of being advertised to myself and as a premium subscriber I do find sponsor segments - especially poorly-places ones - just as annoying as everyone else when watching YouTube - which is why I said I was conflicted in my earlier comment. However as I mentioned in another reply in this thread, removing routes to monetisation and devaluing content in general (by making it be effectively a loss-leader for value-add sponsorships or memberships) will only have the effect of making YouTube non-viable for many, and especially those who necessarily have higher production values to make better quality (I’m thinking more thoroughly-researched, more interesting, that sort of thing) content.
- lrvick 2y ago
  Making YouTube non-viable is the entire point. Google should not be the gatekeeper for the world's content, or get to decide who wins and loses in a rat race trying to keep up with algorithms built to keep users addicted to low quality advertizer friendly content. The end game of ad blocking tech is to make ads a non viable source of revenue so creators will move on to ethical platforms like LBRY or peertube where creators are in charge again and users can pay them directly with no corrupt middle-men . I would suggest being an early adopter on alternative platforms building a direct relationship with a more independent donation-motivated audience before everyone else does.
  - eropple 2y ago
    These are platforms with worse availability and worse affordances, ranging to nonfunctional once you're on a mobile device. Adblocking technology isn't going to make them better. Making them better is going to make them better, but the unit economics remain not in their favor. A more likely future is less video rather than people move to PeerTube and shake an upturned hat for donations. Which doesn't bother me much, but is likely to invoke the FAFO gator on a lot of folks.
    - pino82 2y ago
      > A more likely future is less video You mean I could get a f...ing text again about things, which I could just read at my own speed, skip back and forth by just moving my eyes, use the search function, skip pieces of it, etc etc, in just two minutes instead of ten minutes watching a video clip for the most trivial statements? What a baaad world that would be...
      - johnnyanmac 2y ago
        >You mean I could get a f...ing text again about things Tone aside, we already do that... it's also monetized and being AI-slopified as we speak. Much faster than video. in this scenario where videos become non-viable, people would ujst paywall their text like many journalists have resorted to. There's no free lunch these days.
      - kalleboo 2y ago
        The videos aren't going to be replaced with text, they're going to be replaced with nothing. Text died because it is too hard to get paid for, banner ads paid peanuts to begin with and are now trivial to block. Video ads paid really well which is why people started making video content, if video ads also die, then there is simply going to be no content.
        maxglute 2y ago
        There's going to be less content, which will likely still be more than enough content.
    - consteval 2y ago
      > A more likely future is less video I would say less big budget video. If we're being honest, YouTube is essentially television at this point. Many YouTube views, maybe even most, don't go towards individual creators. They go to Studios and the Jimmy Kimmel's of the world. If someone like boxxy is making videos with a potato cam on her bedroom floor, I don't think she necessarily cares much about the monetization. That USED to be the entire draw and appeal of YouTube. Then monetization came and surprise! The platform changed to be more monetizable, i.e. watered down and corporate.
  - pino82 2y ago
    Exactly that. But surprisingly, although I'd consider it as a trivial insight, we're living in a world that just doesn't want to understand that. And while YT is a lot about casual nonsense, there are other big tech walled gardens, where content fights against some corporate-controlled algorithms, but the content is our entire public discourse nowadays. :( And people still do not want to understand what a terribly bad idea that is...
- manuelmoreale 2y ago
  Aren’t you, as a YouTuber, in the same position as many creators that do the same on other mediums? There are people out there who write amazing blog posts but now the traditional advertising world is basically dead and people have to figure out other ways to make it work. Or they have to accept that what they do is not a full time job but rather a hobby and they need to find other ways to earn a living. Writing is no longer viable for many. I don’t see why YouTube should be this special case.
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    >Writing is no longer viable for many. I don’t see why YouTube should be this special case. >Writing is no longer viable for many. I don’t see why YouTube should be this special case. because Youtube is owned by a trillion dollar corporation but mostly powered by content creators. Substack isn't. It's really that simple. most wringing isn't viable because there's no money in it, literally. There still is money in video ads.
    - manuelmoreale 2y ago
      I’m not asking why it is. I’m asking why it should be.
      - johnnyanmac 2y ago
        Why what should be? Why platforms with money pay people with no money? Why platforms with no money shut down? It's not a very fun answer. Google gets a lot of ads to pay then to shove ads down the consumer's throats, and they can do this with no risk of users migrating. They "should" get more money because they more effectly do this than news websites, which have failed to appeal to advertisers effectively enough. I don't really know what to do with that answer, though. Accept I'm the minority that will subscribe to paid avenues to support creators (or even care about other creator's well beings?) and move on?
        manuelmoreale 2y ago
- ndriscoll 2y ago
  Assuming when you say thoroughly researched, you're looking for high quality educational information, the highest quality videos are generally from a camera pointed at a blackboard/whiteboard recording a lecture that an expert was already going to give. Not a lot of production value necessary.
- chankstein38 2y ago
  I'm not trying to be offensive or hostile but, as much as I value the higher-quality content on youtube, if youtube went back to being just a place people posted videos of themselves doing stuff instead of what effectively amounts to studios making youtube content, I'd consider that a win. Again, not that your content isn't likely appreciated by your audience and valuable. I just miss the days of youtube just being a fun video platform instead of another TV channel.
  - sdoering 2y ago
    D'accord
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    > I just miss the days of youtube just being a fun video platform instead of another TV channel. It's another effect of the economy. Programmers are traditionally well compensated, so they can use their free time literally giving away knowledge for others. Because they don't need to monetize that knowledge to survive. Video editing: not so much. If you want more people just having fun you need some part of the economy making sure they pay rent. Hence, hustle culture. It'd still exist if everyone was comfy, but many people would instead focus on leisure over minmaxing money.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
lifthrasiir 2y ago
It greatly depends on the audience, but for many cases, unfortunately, it's more likely the case that you are dreaming. Typical income flows for streamers include: 1. Passive advertising from video and stream platforms (which many adblockers do block) 2. Active advertising via sponsorships (which SponsorBlock wants to block) 3. Live stream donations 4. Video/stream-independent donations, most usually via Patreon 5. Paid "premium" or behind-the-scene programmes (partly overlaps with video/stream-independent donations due to their obvious weaknesses) 6. Merchandises And not all streamers can do them at once. Live stream donations only work for some genres of streaming and it is easy to stress audiences. Usual donations may or may not work, but it is usually thought to be weaker than live stream donations due to its passiveness (unless you come up with very different perks, but then your income is completely independent from streaming). Many high-profile channels rely greatly on merchandises because it does have significant margins if you can keep launching enough of them, but they are especially risky when your channel and/or stream is not large enough. So smaller channels have traditionally relied on passive advertising, but its flaws are well known and discussed to the death by now. (If you need a list though, higher processing fees, prevalence of adblocking, generally too low income to be sustainable, extreme platform dependence etc.) This leaves active advertising as a compelling option for smaller streamers, at least for now. While I do loathe most kind of advertising, active advertising like this is something I can (barely) tolerate because it is meant to be performed by streamers themselves, unlike passive advertising which rarely relates to the streamer or content itself. And I'm afraid that there doesn't seem to be any other viable option remaining. I can always skip an ad portion of a video if I do find it annoying anyway.
- account42 2y ago
  If blocking ads means for-profit video creators go out of business then so be it. There will always be those who do it because it is something they enjoy and usually that kind of content is more worthwhile anyway.
  - lifthrasiir 2y ago
    You are free to do so, but your claim won't work for most of my favorite creators and streamers. Thank you.
0dayz 2y ago
And I'll agree with you the day we all decide to pay a monthly fee that is big enough to support various websites and creators.
- ndriscoll 2y ago
  Why? As a HN-er/content creator, I don't see why it would be taken for granted that people need to be paid for their hobbies. In fact many people post online for enjoyment.
  - ESTheComposer 2y ago
    If you're a HN-er you should know the culture of HN is very old school and fringe mentality. E.g: - Flip phones are celebrated in some threads because people don't want smart phones (extreme minority in real life) - Disabling JS and pushing sites to go back to just raw HTML CSS (with some even not understanding why we need JS, extreme minority irl. IRL site owners care about attracting customers and the things they want to do can't be done with raw HTML CSS much of the time) - Kagi taking off. IRL most people still do and will continue to Google - People acting like if ads were disabled forever the population would totally pay for things they like (IRL people don't, there's a reason piracy is big. People want the things they want for the cheapest cost possible) HN is a very specific type of tech-centric bubble
    - shiroiushi 2y ago
      >IRL people don't, there's a reason piracy is big. It is? That's not my observation. In fact, music piracy seems to be all but dead, thanks to the streaming services. Movie piracy is not, and seems to be increasing (hard to say though), because of people getting frustrated with the fragmentation of streaming; back in Netflix's heyday, it seemed like movie piracy was much smaller, because you could just pay $7/month to Netflix and watch whatever you wanted. >People want the things they want for the cheapest cost possible No, most people want convenience. That's why music piracy is basically dead. Piracy is usually a PITA, and it's easy to subscribe to Spotify or Apple Music and listen to everything you want. Piracy is usually a service problem, not an economics problem.
stronglikedan 2y ago
I wouldn't pay real money other than my YT Premium, so I'm fine with sponsor reads. I'm not alone.
- zamadatix 2y ago
  As I understand it YouTube Premium viewers result in significantly more revenue than ad based viewers do [1] but represent a tiny fraction of viewers [2] and can't be targeted separately. I.e. if most people were willing to pay in just one way, even if that were just YouTube Premium, then there wouldn't be such a strong incentive for channels to rely on sponsored segments but most people prefer not paying anything and dealing with ads and/or sponsored segments instead leaving those that do a bit stuck with the latter. [1] Just one example https://www.reddit.com/r/youtubegaming/comments/p1qmgu/content_creators_do_more_viewers_with_youtube/ https://www.reddit.com/r/youtubegaming/comments/p1qmgu/conte... [2] https://backlinko.com/youtube-users https://backlinko.com/youtube-users
  - CuriousSkeptic 2y ago
    I would buy premium in a heartbeat if it actually filtered out all ads and sponsored content. Not just the segment, the entire video should be cut if its creation was influenced by “impressions” or what ever filler content is measured in. The current deal gives me no value, it just distributes more money to promote quantity crap over quality. Someone needs to figures out how to take my money and distribute them to people working on actually valuable stuff.
    - johnnyanmac 2y ago
      >Someone needs to figures out how to take my money and distribute them to people working on actually valuable stuff. why do you need a financial advisor to donate to Patreon or even Youtube memberships now? The models are about as easy to (un)subscribe from as you can get, while allowing granular control. Do you really want some "index fund" where you trust someone else to use your money to fund "good creators"? That sounds like a capitalist's wet dreams. And a consumer hellscape.
throw10920 2y ago
Direct payment is good, but Patreon-type models are unfair (for both consumers and creators), inefficient (in terms of both time and money spent by consumers), and unscalable (to anything but a tiny fraction of the economy). We need direct microtransactions on the per-video/content-item level.

by erklik 2y ago

noone_youknow 2y ago

Sure, I totally get that. I’m no fan of being advertised to myself and as a premium subscriber I do find sponsor segments - especially poorly-places ones - just as annoying as everyone else when watching YouTube - which is why I said I was conflicted in my earlier comment. However as I mentioned in another reply in this thread, removing routes to monetisation and devaluing content in general (by making it be effectively a loss-leader for value-add sponsorships or memberships) will only have the effect of making YouTube non-viable for many, and especially those who necessarily have higher production values to make better quality (I’m thinking more thoroughly-researched, more interesting, that sort of thing) content.

lrvick 2y ago
Making YouTube non-viable is the entire point. Google should not be the gatekeeper for the world's content, or get to decide who wins and loses in a rat race trying to keep up with algorithms built to keep users addicted to low quality advertizer friendly content. The end game of ad blocking tech is to make ads a non viable source of revenue so creators will move on to ethical platforms like LBRY or peertube where creators are in charge again and users can pay them directly with no corrupt middle-men . I would suggest being an early adopter on alternative platforms building a direct relationship with a more independent donation-motivated audience before everyone else does.
- eropple 2y ago
  These are platforms with worse availability and worse affordances, ranging to nonfunctional once you're on a mobile device. Adblocking technology isn't going to make them better. Making them better is going to make them better, but the unit economics remain not in their favor. A more likely future is less video rather than people move to PeerTube and shake an upturned hat for donations. Which doesn't bother me much, but is likely to invoke the FAFO gator on a lot of folks.
  - pino82 2y ago
    > A more likely future is less video You mean I could get a f...ing text again about things, which I could just read at my own speed, skip back and forth by just moving my eyes, use the search function, skip pieces of it, etc etc, in just two minutes instead of ten minutes watching a video clip for the most trivial statements? What a baaad world that would be...
    - johnnyanmac 2y ago
      >You mean I could get a f...ing text again about things Tone aside, we already do that... it's also monetized and being AI-slopified as we speak. Much faster than video. in this scenario where videos become non-viable, people would ujst paywall their text like many journalists have resorted to. There's no free lunch these days.
    - kalleboo 2y ago
      The videos aren't going to be replaced with text, they're going to be replaced with nothing. Text died because it is too hard to get paid for, banner ads paid peanuts to begin with and are now trivial to block. Video ads paid really well which is why people started making video content, if video ads also die, then there is simply going to be no content.
      - maxglute 2y ago
        There's going to be less content, which will likely still be more than enough content.
  - consteval 2y ago
    > A more likely future is less video I would say less big budget video. If we're being honest, YouTube is essentially television at this point. Many YouTube views, maybe even most, don't go towards individual creators. They go to Studios and the Jimmy Kimmel's of the world. If someone like boxxy is making videos with a potato cam on her bedroom floor, I don't think she necessarily cares much about the monetization. That USED to be the entire draw and appeal of YouTube. Then monetization came and surprise! The platform changed to be more monetizable, i.e. watered down and corporate.
- pino82 2y ago
  Exactly that. But surprisingly, although I'd consider it as a trivial insight, we're living in a world that just doesn't want to understand that. And while YT is a lot about casual nonsense, there are other big tech walled gardens, where content fights against some corporate-controlled algorithms, but the content is our entire public discourse nowadays. :( And people still do not want to understand what a terribly bad idea that is...
manuelmoreale 2y ago
Aren’t you, as a YouTuber, in the same position as many creators that do the same on other mediums? There are people out there who write amazing blog posts but now the traditional advertising world is basically dead and people have to figure out other ways to make it work. Or they have to accept that what they do is not a full time job but rather a hobby and they need to find other ways to earn a living. Writing is no longer viable for many. I don’t see why YouTube should be this special case.
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  >Writing is no longer viable for many. I don’t see why YouTube should be this special case. >Writing is no longer viable for many. I don’t see why YouTube should be this special case. because Youtube is owned by a trillion dollar corporation but mostly powered by content creators. Substack isn't. It's really that simple. most wringing isn't viable because there's no money in it, literally. There still is money in video ads.
  - manuelmoreale 2y ago
    I’m not asking why it is. I’m asking why it should be.
    - johnnyanmac 2y ago
      Why what should be? Why platforms with money pay people with no money? Why platforms with no money shut down? It's not a very fun answer. Google gets a lot of ads to pay then to shove ads down the consumer's throats, and they can do this with no risk of users migrating. They "should" get more money because they more effectly do this than news websites, which have failed to appeal to advertisers effectively enough. I don't really know what to do with that answer, though. Accept I'm the minority that will subscribe to paid avenues to support creators (or even care about other creator's well beings?) and move on?
      - manuelmoreale 2y ago
ndriscoll 2y ago
Assuming when you say thoroughly researched, you're looking for high quality educational information, the highest quality videos are generally from a camera pointed at a blackboard/whiteboard recording a lecture that an expert was already going to give. Not a lot of production value necessary.
chankstein38 2y ago
I'm not trying to be offensive or hostile but, as much as I value the higher-quality content on youtube, if youtube went back to being just a place people posted videos of themselves doing stuff instead of what effectively amounts to studios making youtube content, I'd consider that a win. Again, not that your content isn't likely appreciated by your audience and valuable. I just miss the days of youtube just being a fun video platform instead of another TV channel.
- sdoering 2y ago
  D'accord
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  > I just miss the days of youtube just being a fun video platform instead of another TV channel. It's another effect of the economy. Programmers are traditionally well compensated, so they can use their free time literally giving away knowledge for others. Because they don't need to monetize that knowledge to survive. Video editing: not so much. If you want more people just having fun you need some part of the economy making sure they pay rent. Hence, hustle culture. It'd still exist if everyone was comfy, but many people would instead focus on leisure over minmaxing money.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

lifthrasiir 2y ago

It greatly depends on the audience, but for many cases, unfortunately, it's more likely the case that you are dreaming. Typical income flows for streamers include: 1. Passive advertising from video and stream platforms (which many adblockers do block) 2. Active advertising via sponsorships (which SponsorBlock wants to block) 3. Live stream donations 4. Video/stream-independent donations, most usually via Patreon 5. Paid "premium" or behind-the-scene programmes (partly overlaps with video/stream-independent donations due to their obvious weaknesses) 6. Merchandises And not all streamers can do them at once. Live stream donations only work for some genres of streaming and it is easy to stress audiences. Usual donations may or may not work, but it is usually thought to be weaker than live stream donations due to its passiveness (unless you come up with very different perks, but then your income is completely independent from streaming). Many high-profile channels rely greatly on merchandises because it does have significant margins if you can keep launching enough of them, but they are especially risky when your channel and/or stream is not large enough. So smaller channels have traditionally relied on passive advertising, but its flaws are well known and discussed to the death by now. (If you need a list though, higher processing fees, prevalence of adblocking, generally too low income to be sustainable, extreme platform dependence etc.) This leaves active advertising as a compelling option for smaller streamers, at least for now. While I do loathe most kind of advertising, active advertising like this is something I can (barely) tolerate because it is meant to be performed by streamers themselves, unlike passive advertising which rarely relates to the streamer or content itself. And I'm afraid that there doesn't seem to be any other viable option remaining. I can always skip an ad portion of a video if I do find it annoying anyway.

account42 2y ago
If blocking ads means for-profit video creators go out of business then so be it. There will always be those who do it because it is something they enjoy and usually that kind of content is more worthwhile anyway.
- lifthrasiir 2y ago
  You are free to do so, but your claim won't work for most of my favorite creators and streamers. Thank you.

0dayz 2y ago

And I'll agree with you the day we all decide to pay a monthly fee that is big enough to support various websites and creators.

ndriscoll 2y ago
Why? As a HN-er/content creator, I don't see why it would be taken for granted that people need to be paid for their hobbies. In fact many people post online for enjoyment.
- ESTheComposer 2y ago
  If you're a HN-er you should know the culture of HN is very old school and fringe mentality. E.g: - Flip phones are celebrated in some threads because people don't want smart phones (extreme minority in real life) - Disabling JS and pushing sites to go back to just raw HTML CSS (with some even not understanding why we need JS, extreme minority irl. IRL site owners care about attracting customers and the things they want to do can't be done with raw HTML CSS much of the time) - Kagi taking off. IRL most people still do and will continue to Google - People acting like if ads were disabled forever the population would totally pay for things they like (IRL people don't, there's a reason piracy is big. People want the things they want for the cheapest cost possible) HN is a very specific type of tech-centric bubble
  - shiroiushi 2y ago
    >IRL people don't, there's a reason piracy is big. It is? That's not my observation. In fact, music piracy seems to be all but dead, thanks to the streaming services. Movie piracy is not, and seems to be increasing (hard to say though), because of people getting frustrated with the fragmentation of streaming; back in Netflix's heyday, it seemed like movie piracy was much smaller, because you could just pay $7/month to Netflix and watch whatever you wanted. >People want the things they want for the cheapest cost possible No, most people want convenience. That's why music piracy is basically dead. Piracy is usually a PITA, and it's easy to subscribe to Spotify or Apple Music and listen to everything you want. Piracy is usually a service problem, not an economics problem.

stronglikedan 2y ago

I wouldn't pay real money other than my YT Premium, so I'm fine with sponsor reads. I'm not alone.

zamadatix 2y ago
As I understand it YouTube Premium viewers result in significantly more revenue than ad based viewers do [1] but represent a tiny fraction of viewers [2] and can't be targeted separately. I.e. if most people were willing to pay in just one way, even if that were just YouTube Premium, then there wouldn't be such a strong incentive for channels to rely on sponsored segments but most people prefer not paying anything and dealing with ads and/or sponsored segments instead leaving those that do a bit stuck with the latter. [1] Just one example https://www.reddit.com/r/youtubegaming/comments/p1qmgu/content_creators_do_more_viewers_with_youtube/ https://www.reddit.com/r/youtubegaming/comments/p1qmgu/conte... [2] https://backlinko.com/youtube-users https://backlinko.com/youtube-users
- CuriousSkeptic 2y ago
  I would buy premium in a heartbeat if it actually filtered out all ads and sponsored content. Not just the segment, the entire video should be cut if its creation was influenced by “impressions” or what ever filler content is measured in. The current deal gives me no value, it just distributes more money to promote quantity crap over quality. Someone needs to figures out how to take my money and distribute them to people working on actually valuable stuff.
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    >Someone needs to figures out how to take my money and distribute them to people working on actually valuable stuff. why do you need a financial advisor to donate to Patreon or even Youtube memberships now? The models are about as easy to (un)subscribe from as you can get, while allowing granular control. Do you really want some "index fund" where you trust someone else to use your money to fund "good creators"? That sounds like a capitalist's wet dreams. And a consumer hellscape.

throw10920 2y ago

Direct payment is good, but Patreon-type models are unfair (for both consumers and creators), inefficient (in terms of both time and money spent by consumers), and unscalable (to anything but a tiny fraction of the economy). We need direct microtransactions on the per-video/content-item level.