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Jeff Geerling has been sleuthing into this lately too - my biggest takeaway is that it's only viewer counts that are suffering, he's not seen revenue drop which

• happytoexplain 1y ago
  You're saying that YouTube implemented a change that significantly reduces creators' viewer counts but won't affect their revenue, and they haven't told creators? "Here, have a heart attack"?
  • a_shovel 1y ago
    nobody's ever accused youtube of being too transparent with creators
  • kllrnohj 1y ago
    YouTube didn't change anything. The ad blockers recently started blocking the metric call for whatever reason.
    • Larrikin 1y ago
      [flagged]
      • kllrnohj 1y ago
        It's in the github issue in OP: https://github.com/easylist/easylist/issues/22375#issuecomment-3297092232 https://github.com/easylist/easylist/issues/22375#issuecomme...
• Ajedi32 1y ago
  I'm guessing the viewers who now suddenly aren't being counted were already not contributing to revenue because they block ads.
  • shadowgovt 1y ago
    They impact individual channel revenue because so many channels have gone to sponsored ads, which automatic ad-blockers can't block (yet (1) ). The calibre of sponsor a channel can attract is impacted by the reported views from YouTube. (1) Hey, imagine I had a plugin that monitored the behavior of several viewers of each video and could collate where most people skipped a big chunk of video, then, oh I don't know, offered a feature where if lots of people skip one chunk, it'll automatically skip it for you when you're playing the video....
    • fragmede 1y ago
      If only there were some way that money in my pocket went to some of the people related to the things I like to watch. Some sort of premium service where YouTube could pay for a person to come to my house and collect money from me, and them give it to the people making videos, and then we won't have ads? Nah, that'll never work.
      • nemomarx 1y ago
        do we know what happens if you run premium and an ad blocker together? I would hope they would still pay the creator for my views but I'm not sure now
        • carlosjobim 1y ago
          They pay creators more when a person with premium is watching their videos. Ad-blockers have no relevance in this case.
          • machinate 1y ago
            Apparently ad blockers can interfere with key view metrics. Unclear what premium uses to disburse the 55% share that goes to creators; hopefully it's not those ones.
            • 1y ago
• pilaf 1y ago
  Many youtubers have sponsorships though, and their viewership stats come into play when negotiating with potential sponsors. I guess if everyone was hit equally across the board then those sponsors will eventually adjust to the new metrics, but I assume some genres have more tech-savvy audiences which are more likely to use ad-blockers, so I'm not sure how evenly distributed this penalty falls.
  • tehwebguy 1y ago
    The automated “Skip Ahead” button (which I use daily) is already hostile to sponsorships. I would not be at all surprised to see them hitting sponsors on multiple fronts.
    • johanyc 1y ago
      > The automated “Skip Ahead” button (which I use daily) is already hostile to sponsorships Is it? If I proactively click skip, that means that sponsor is offering something of no use to me. As the sponsor, they successfully make an impression for a second or two anyway. And as a viewer that skip ahead button is much better than pressing right arrow button multiple times
      • everforward 1y ago
        The brand recognition is worth something. I haven't been in the market for new headphones in a long time, but I still know the name Raycon from the bajillion sponsorships they do. Likewise with NordVPN and Raid: Shadowlegends. Never used any of them, don't really intend to, but I do know the name.
      • recursive 1y ago
        There's a shift in tone of voice or ham-fisted segue that gives it away before they even name the sponsor. I can usually click the button before they even name the sponsor.
        • k12sosse 1y ago
• dogleash 1y ago
  > Viewer counts are vanity, revenue is sanity :) Except viewer counts are a factor for baked in ads. In this case, all the sleuthing and videos about the change are the probably the only thing that will alleviate/lessen the seemingly-worse ad rate negotiation position youtubers with less viewers suddenly find themselves in.
  • bluGill 1y ago
    Those buying baked in ads just need to find other ways to verify value. This is nothing new, no large company buys ads without checking how they really work (though many small companies would). There is someone who checks all those "how did you hear about us" responses asked at checkout - they want to know if the ad really provided value. Sure the TV stations tracked and reported ratings, but that is only one of the signs ad buyers look at, and it is one they only trust because they check and so would catch if it is manipulated. The ad business is far older than the internet and there is a lot of old knowledge that apples directly to the internet. Those buying backed in ads should be aware of and tracking such efforts.
    • typpilol 1y ago
      A lot of sponsors have shyed away from YouTube because of the fake views and botting problem. Some were paying big money to streamers with 20,000 live viewers. Even though 19000 of those were fake. The sponsor then sees the ad and did terribly and doesn't sponsor anyone else in the future.
      • bluGill 1y ago
        That is why big companies calculate returns. That type of fraud predates the internet. you can be sure one of the first newspapers tried it.
• geerlingguy 1y ago
  Two concerns I have in the long-term: 1. It seems views from Premium users who use adblock might also not get counted—and I'm not sure if the revenue from a Premium view in that circumstance would be counted or not (more research needed). 2. YouTube's recommendation engine weights views heavily in the system, which means channels with a more technical, traditional desktop viewing audience (probably a substantial portion of HN users) will be most impacted, and will not be able to grow an audience to help fund projects, yadda yadda. YouTube creators with younger, mobile, less FOSS-y, and less tech-savvy audiences are therefore rewarded with more views/mindshare. I know some here are like "go get a REAL job, influencers are scum", but I think that discounts the helpful work of many tech creators. Not only in direct contributions to open source projects, but also in being a voice to balance out the paid 'product showcase' style videos for many tech products that come to market. In other words: if adblock users disincentivize creators like me from spending time and resources on YouTube, then video content will more quickly settle into the online magazine/news status quo, where 99% of the articles you read are just PR spin. Which you could argue would bring about YouTube's downfall earlier... or would lead us even more quickly to an Idiocracy-style society :D I'm not saying adblock is bad or wrong or anything—I can't stand the YT ad spam, so I pay for Premium. To each their own. In any case, YouTube shoulders some of the burden, but will be the main entity to profit in any scenario.
  • whatarethembits 1y ago
    If this leads to lower quality videos, due to change in incentives, for certain segments, then I would consider it a WIN for users. For the portion of users for whom the lower quality is not palatable, they will get their time back to spend on other things in life. This is all completely subjective of course.
  • makeitdouble 1y ago
    > I know some here are like "go get a REAL job, influencers are scum" Signing up for the creator's patreon or buying merch is the more widely adopted reaction by the those actually enjoying the content.
  • shagie 1y ago
    Prior to getting Premium, YouTube was able to detect that I was watching a video (and nag me about premium as a way to get rid of ads). Since getting Premium, I haven't gotten the nag message. I run AdGuard (on a Mac). It has a filter log feature. Poking at the log while playing a video, I do see calls to ttps://{{clusterid?}}.googlevideo.com/videoplayback?expire=1758173247&... However, this call is not being blocked. I suspect that this is the "keep watching" feature that tracks where I am in various videos (switching from one logged in device to another keeps the same position). Watching the video all the way through, I don't see any requests relating to this getting blocked while on Premium. This feature is also likely more than sufficient data to attribute a view (and monetization of the view). There was also a call to ttps://www.youtube.com/youtubei/v1/log_event?alt=json that was not blocked. I do see some doubleclick.net links being blocked, thought that could be from any number of other pages I've got open. Going to an incognito session and pulling up the same video (Once Around Trappist 1)... There's now a call (that has gotten blocked) to ttps://www.youtube.com/api/stats/watchtime... That call was not something that I saw when logged into premium. This rule is described as "@@||www.youtube.com^$generichide (AdGuard Base filter)"
• naikrovek 1y ago
  > Viewer counts are vanity, revenue is sanity :) while true, choosing to base your income on the wellbeing of a company and its ad placement, no matter how well your video does or how good you are at producing videos is absolute insanity to me. You become a slave to the latest monetization techniques and if you don't adopt them your revenue goes down, and your videos get put in front of fewer people, resulting in less income. This is bizarre to me, and definitely unwanted, because the things you need to do will never stop ramping up. A video used to do better because the thumbnail had a reaction face on it, now it's required just to keep your view count where it normally should be. People got used to that, and now ignore it. But it's still required if you want to get your video in front of people. Now thumbnails must be rotated out frequently for the first few days of a video's life until the thumbnail which results in the most views is found. Soon people will become immune to this tactic just like they became immune to the reaction faces, and something new will come up to replace it. Except you don't stop with the reaction faces and the thumbnail rotation, you have to keep doing those. Advertising requires this constant escalation to counter people's ever-increasing ability to ignore advertisements, and this will never stop so long as revenue determines how often a video is placed on the youtube.com homepage for a given viewer. it will never stop until advertisement is no longer a thing at all. a content creator must continually escalate what they are doing in order to stay right where they are in viewership, and even then they are subject to constant drops in revenue because of the whims of Google and advertising partners. The whole thing is absolutely insane and I can't understand why someone would choose this to be their primary source of income. If people didn't choose to make youtube a career, there would be far fewer ads on youtube, because people would not be fighting so hard for views.
• drtgh 1y ago
  Google's browser holds almost the entire market share, and it's a browser that shifted to Manifest V3 to prevent ad blockers from being installed (which now require special effort from users to install and keep it/them working). Do people really believe that the decrease in the number of visits is as significant as Google is trying to make YouTubers believe through their algorithm? I don't know... To me, it just seems like a textbook move from a Corporate Abuse Playbook. I bet someone at Google is laughing about it right now.