7 ms·

I'm surprised they don't just inject the ads directly into the video stream, I think that would solve their issue overnight (not that I want any ads personally)

I'm surprised they don't just inject the ads directly into the video stream, I think that would solve their issue overnight (not that I want any ads personally). You could also rate-limit it to the playback speed to prevent pre-downloading the stream easily. But now that everything uses HLS/DASH, it's easy to inject different content right in the middle of the stream without re-encoding anything.

aucisson_masque 1y ago
I think it’s only a matter of time before it’s reality. They own the hosting website, if they want to show their user ads, they will find a way, even if it takes a few year.
optimalsolver 1y ago
Creators will never accept it.
- recursive 1y ago
  Creators will take what they're given. They have no leverage.
crazygringo 1y ago
I've also wondered about this for a long time. It seems like there must be something difficult about it, but I can't even guess. Otherwise it seems like they would be, no?
- kevindamm 1y ago
  I suspect the difficulty is due to a fear of it turning away too many users, not necessarily a technical one.
  - recursive 1y ago
    Turning them to where? Doubt it. Those are low value users anyway.
    - ilkke 1y ago
      If the value was low they wouldn't be squeezing it.
      - recursive 1y ago
        Get valuable or leave I guess.
lanfeust6 1y ago
The creators themselves will include sponsor segments in their videos, but some users go a step further and use sponsorblock to automatically skip through.
walthamstow 1y ago
That's how some podcast houses do it. Sometimes they'll be mid sentence and the ad will come in. I pay for a subscription to The Athletic, who used to offer ad free podcasts in their app. Last month they signed an exclusive deal with Acast, and now I cannot possibly listen to their podcasts without ads.
k12sosse 1y ago
How does Twitch do it? They're super aggressive and even using third party clients that do a good job and not displaying ads, you still get an occasional "commercial break" screen where they're not serving you the content, or the ad, just a "let's all go to the lobby" screen.
- thaumasiotes 1y ago
  Those clients could be doing a better job - when twitch starts playing an ad on the main stream, they also provide a secondary stream that shows the actual content.
  - plopz 1y ago
    i believe that secondary stream is used for picture in picture so its lower quality, like 480p or something
    - thaumasiotes 1y ago
      Maybe; I don't know anything about it. I will note that that belief could easily develop, true or not, if twitch streams start out in low resolution and increase as you buffer them. A third-party client has room to make a dramatic improvement on the twitch experience by not dropping audio while you make the switch from the ad stream to the content stream.
- ekimekim 1y ago
  Twitch puts the ads directly in the HLS stream, but as seperate segments from the content (a HLS stream is made of many small video files, on twitch they're about 2s long). They're trivial to recognize and filter out (they're actually explicitly tagged as ad segments) but it still won't serve you the actual stream you were trying to watch - the ad segments override it. The best you can do is just block until the first non-ad segment arrives.
noman-land 1y ago
There exists crowdsourced adblocking based on timestamps (SponsorBlock, Tubular). Soon we will have realtime on-device content-aware AI adblocking. They will ever win.
- thomassmith65 1y ago
  Once we get content-aware AI adblocking, every video and podcast will turn into a product placement.
  - ekianjo 1y ago
    They are already doing product placement everywhere..'
    - thomassmith65 1y ago
      Few shows are relentless about it. In the future, everything will be like that vapid chicken wing podcast (the one where they bring on an interesting, talented person and then waste half an hour interviewing her about sriracha) So Ira Glass will be narrating This American Life while simultaneously reviewing different varieties of Doritos, etc. ...or the producers of The Rest is History will add the Planters Peanut Man as a third host ...or Marques Brownlee will review every product in relation to how well it works with Bose headphones
      - squigz 1y ago
        No, the future will not be like that.
        thomassmith65 1y ago
        I've seen the future, and it kills 99.99% of germs, bacteria and viruses... ...it powers through tough grease and grime ...with no harsh smells! The future is Fantastik®.
      - sodality2 1y ago
thomassmith65 1y ago
They don't want to boil the frog too quickly. Eventually, Youtube will embed ads directly into the stream. As the post mentions: To be clear this isn’t server-side ad insertion; the ad and content streams are still separate (YouTube is doing a server-side ad insertion experiment, but that’s separate from fake buffering)
- eddythompson80 1y ago
  Yep. It's been pretty funny actually both here but especially on r/youtube. Pretty much since YouTube started cracking down on adblockers, r/youtube top post Every. Single. Day. is usually someone complaining that they just got hit with "adblock detected" and comments split between "Yeah it sucks, hit me last month" and "Huh, uBlock Origin works fine for me. I must be super smart. YouTube can't defeat me"
- mullingitover 1y ago
  > Eventually, Youtube will embed ads directly into the stream We've all seen what they're doing with AI-generated video, and we know their market and political power. Eventually they'll be remaking the video so the person or animal or rock or tree on the screen is giving AI-generated product testimonials.
peer2pay 1y ago
It has to be a cost thing. HLS is so insanely optimised down to the hardware level that adding any kind of compute for targeting would increase costs exponentially. I’m not too deep into it anymore but there’s some great articles from Netflix out there talking about the crazy optimisations done to their edge servers for streaming.
- esperent 1y ago
  It would break all the time stamps as well, unless you had fixed length ads. Sponsorblock already skips ads embedded in videos, so I don't think this would make ads much harder to block.
  - BriggyDwiggs42 1y ago
    True, it would be sorta impossible to make timestamps work without sending the length of the ad section, so you could easily skip it programmatically.
- cyberax 1y ago
  > HLS is so insanely optimised down to the hardware level that adding any kind of compute for targeting would increase costs exponentially. Not really. They'll just need to recode for you that one minute with the ad. The rest of the video can stay the same. If they're doing it smartly, they can even avoid full recompression and just splice in the ad.
- oneseventwonine 1y ago
  Agree, it has to do with cost, considering the sheer number of videos they have. Plus, oftentimes the ad won't be relevant after a week or two, in which case they can't re-encode again.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
2OEH8eoCRo0 1y ago
If they had balls they'd force the user to be logged in.
Retr0id 1y ago
One could splice ads out of the video on the client just as easily as they splice them in, assuming you can detect them (which could be done via crowdsourced databases a la sponsorblock).
- cyberax 1y ago
  They can splice the video just for you at a random location.
  - asadotzler 1y ago
    Sure, and I can use "technology" to identify those splices, and fix them in various ways that work for me because I control the client (unlike Chrome users) and that gives me the power to make the web behave how I want it to, if I'm willing to put in the effort (or someone else does it for me.)
smitop 1y ago
YouTube is currently running an A/B test for server-side insertion according to what some other people have posted. I'm not getting SSAI ads so I can't really know much about them though.
rasz 1y ago
They are working on it. Web YT player no longer fetches separate video and audio streams from the server, it requests them pre bundled and receives a single server side muxed stream.
layer8 1y ago
Injecting the ads directly would make them skippable. Unskippable ads are inherently detectable (because the unskippability has to be communicated to the client-side player controls), so there’s no easy way out.
- bspammer 1y ago
  Twitch seems to have won the war against adblockers by injecting directly into the video stream. It’s been months now and I still see ads. I assume it isn’t as easy as you say to skip them otherwise uBlock would have done it already.
  - chippiewill 1y ago
    For livestreaming it's easier because you can't skip forward anyway
  - Strom 1y ago
    The core difference is that when Twitch plays an ad, they'll never send you that part of the video. [1] So buffering doesn't help. If YouTube would do this, you could have a custom player that preloads enough of the video so that all ads could be automatically skipped and as a viewer you wouldn't notice their existence. However, on Twitch, even if you're willing to give up the live factor and would buffer, you still would have missing parts of the video where an ad was placed. So you would lose content. [2] -- [1] They do send a super low resolution stream with no audio, but not the actual quality you are watching in. [2] Right now Twitch does not stop sending content in markets where they don't have ad inventory. So there are actually browser extensions already that will use a custom foreign market server to proxy the video during ad breaks, so that you can still have an 100% effective ad blocker.
- jay_kyburz 1y ago
  The server can just ignore the player and send the bytes for the ad until its finished.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]

aucisson_masque 1y ago

I think it’s only a matter of time before it’s reality. They own the hosting website, if they want to show their user ads, they will find a way, even if it takes a few year.

optimalsolver 1y ago

Creators will never accept it.

recursive 1y ago
Creators will take what they're given. They have no leverage.

crazygringo 1y ago

I've also wondered about this for a long time. It seems like there must be something difficult about it, but I can't even guess. Otherwise it seems like they would be, no?

kevindamm 1y ago
I suspect the difficulty is due to a fear of it turning away too many users, not necessarily a technical one.
- recursive 1y ago
  Turning them to where? Doubt it. Those are low value users anyway.
  - ilkke 1y ago
    If the value was low they wouldn't be squeezing it.
    - recursive 1y ago
      Get valuable or leave I guess.

lanfeust6 1y ago

The creators themselves will include sponsor segments in their videos, but some users go a step further and use sponsorblock to automatically skip through.

walthamstow 1y ago

That's how some podcast houses do it. Sometimes they'll be mid sentence and the ad will come in. I pay for a subscription to The Athletic, who used to offer ad free podcasts in their app. Last month they signed an exclusive deal with Acast, and now I cannot possibly listen to their podcasts without ads.

k12sosse 1y ago

How does Twitch do it? They're super aggressive and even using third party clients that do a good job and not displaying ads, you still get an occasional "commercial break" screen where they're not serving you the content, or the ad, just a "let's all go to the lobby" screen.

thaumasiotes 1y ago
Those clients could be doing a better job - when twitch starts playing an ad on the main stream, they also provide a secondary stream that shows the actual content.
- plopz 1y ago
  i believe that secondary stream is used for picture in picture so its lower quality, like 480p or something
  - thaumasiotes 1y ago
    Maybe; I don't know anything about it. I will note that that belief could easily develop, true or not, if twitch streams start out in low resolution and increase as you buffer them. A third-party client has room to make a dramatic improvement on the twitch experience by not dropping audio while you make the switch from the ad stream to the content stream.
ekimekim 1y ago
Twitch puts the ads directly in the HLS stream, but as seperate segments from the content (a HLS stream is made of many small video files, on twitch they're about 2s long). They're trivial to recognize and filter out (they're actually explicitly tagged as ad segments) but it still won't serve you the actual stream you were trying to watch - the ad segments override it. The best you can do is just block until the first non-ad segment arrives.

noman-land 1y ago

There exists crowdsourced adblocking based on timestamps (SponsorBlock, Tubular). Soon we will have realtime on-device content-aware AI adblocking. They will ever win.

thomassmith65 1y ago
Once we get content-aware AI adblocking, every video and podcast will turn into a product placement.
- ekianjo 1y ago
  They are already doing product placement everywhere..'
  - thomassmith65 1y ago
    Few shows are relentless about it. In the future, everything will be like that vapid chicken wing podcast (the one where they bring on an interesting, talented person and then waste half an hour interviewing her about sriracha) So Ira Glass will be narrating This American Life while simultaneously reviewing different varieties of Doritos, etc. ...or the producers of The Rest is History will add the Planters Peanut Man as a third host ...or Marques Brownlee will review every product in relation to how well it works with Bose headphones
    - squigz 1y ago
      No, the future will not be like that.
      - thomassmith65 1y ago
        I've seen the future, and it kills 99.99% of germs, bacteria and viruses... ...it powers through tough grease and grime ...with no harsh smells! The future is Fantastik®.
    - sodality2 1y ago

thomassmith65 1y ago

They don't want to boil the frog too quickly. Eventually, Youtube will embed ads directly into the stream. As the post mentions: To be clear this isn’t server-side ad insertion; the ad and content streams are still separate (YouTube is doing a server-side ad insertion experiment, but that’s separate from fake buffering)

eddythompson80 1y ago
Yep. It's been pretty funny actually both here but especially on r/youtube. Pretty much since YouTube started cracking down on adblockers, r/youtube top post Every. Single. Day. is usually someone complaining that they just got hit with "adblock detected" and comments split between "Yeah it sucks, hit me last month" and "Huh, uBlock Origin works fine for me. I must be super smart. YouTube can't defeat me"
mullingitover 1y ago
> Eventually, Youtube will embed ads directly into the stream We've all seen what they're doing with AI-generated video, and we know their market and political power. Eventually they'll be remaking the video so the person or animal or rock or tree on the screen is giving AI-generated product testimonials.

peer2pay 1y ago

It has to be a cost thing. HLS is so insanely optimised down to the hardware level that adding any kind of compute for targeting would increase costs exponentially. I’m not too deep into it anymore but there’s some great articles from Netflix out there talking about the crazy optimisations done to their edge servers for streaming.

esperent 1y ago
It would break all the time stamps as well, unless you had fixed length ads. Sponsorblock already skips ads embedded in videos, so I don't think this would make ads much harder to block.
- BriggyDwiggs42 1y ago
  True, it would be sorta impossible to make timestamps work without sending the length of the ad section, so you could easily skip it programmatically.
cyberax 1y ago
> HLS is so insanely optimised down to the hardware level that adding any kind of compute for targeting would increase costs exponentially. Not really. They'll just need to recode for you that one minute with the ad. The rest of the video can stay the same. If they're doing it smartly, they can even avoid full recompression and just splice in the ad.
oneseventwonine 1y ago
Agree, it has to do with cost, considering the sheer number of videos they have. Plus, oftentimes the ad won't be relevant after a week or two, in which case they can't re-encode again.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

2OEH8eoCRo0 1y ago

If they had balls they'd force the user to be logged in.

Retr0id 1y ago

One could splice ads out of the video on the client just as easily as they splice them in, assuming you can detect them (which could be done via crowdsourced databases a la sponsorblock).

cyberax 1y ago
They can splice the video just for you at a random location.
- asadotzler 1y ago
  Sure, and I can use "technology" to identify those splices, and fix them in various ways that work for me because I control the client (unlike Chrome users) and that gives me the power to make the web behave how I want it to, if I'm willing to put in the effort (or someone else does it for me.)

smitop 1y ago

YouTube is currently running an A/B test for server-side insertion according to what some other people have posted. I'm not getting SSAI ads so I can't really know much about them though.

rasz 1y ago

They are working on it. Web YT player no longer fetches separate video and audio streams from the server, it requests them pre bundled and receives a single server side muxed stream.

layer8 1y ago

Injecting the ads directly would make them skippable. Unskippable ads are inherently detectable (because the unskippability has to be communicated to the client-side player controls), so there’s no easy way out.

bspammer 1y ago
Twitch seems to have won the war against adblockers by injecting directly into the video stream. It’s been months now and I still see ads. I assume it isn’t as easy as you say to skip them otherwise uBlock would have done it already.
- chippiewill 1y ago
  For livestreaming it's easier because you can't skip forward anyway
- Strom 1y ago
  The core difference is that when Twitch plays an ad, they'll never send you that part of the video. [1] So buffering doesn't help. If YouTube would do this, you could have a custom player that preloads enough of the video so that all ads could be automatically skipped and as a viewer you wouldn't notice their existence. However, on Twitch, even if you're willing to give up the live factor and would buffer, you still would have missing parts of the video where an ad was placed. So you would lose content. [2] -- [1] They do send a super low resolution stream with no audio, but not the actual quality you are watching in. [2] Right now Twitch does not stop sending content in markets where they don't have ad inventory. So there are actually browser extensions already that will use a custom foreign market server to proxy the video during ad breaks, so that you can still have an 100% effective ad blocker.
jay_kyburz 1y ago
The server can just ignore the player and send the bytes for the ad until its finished.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]