Comment on YouTube's plan backfires, people are installing better ad blockers

• Kodemystic@lemmy.kodemystic.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  I think it wouldn’t be that dificult to figure out what is interesting for people watching the video since channels themselves already usually have a target audience. If I am watching a video from a dude who focus on video games or tech odds are I’d be more interested in tech adds. But if Google REALLY wants to know what we need/want then yeah maybe you’re right. Shit it happened so many times me just saying the word pizza or shoes/snickersnwoyld set off a pizza ad later in my phone. These mfers want to inject ads on our souls.

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  • UraniumBlazer@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Not rlly. Your point would be relevant for niche YouTube videos. What about generic videos tho? Say something like music videos. Kinda everyone watches them. In fact, music videos get the highest amount of views. Ads inserted in such videos based purely on the content of these videos would be too generic, thus of lower average relevancy to the viewer, thus ultimately translating to less revenue.

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  • youngGoku@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I don’t get targeted ads anymore but it took a lot of work to get here and I don’t have a lot of the conveniences as other folks who use google play, oauth, etc.

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• jol@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  There’s no reason they can’t mix relevant ads in the video stream itself. It’s just technically more expensive and complex.

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  • UraniumBlazer@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    U could still easily evade this. Here’s why:

    Ad is inserted into stream. Either one of two things happens depending upon the way it is implemented:

    1. The length of the video stream increases as the ad is inserted suddenly. The ad blocker can simply calculate the difference and skip the difference worth of time, thus skipping the ad.

    2. The length of the video doesn’t increase to prevent this. Thus, you get the ad stream overlapping in front of the actual video stream. This would thus kinda be on the frontend, which could easily be blocked.

    3. The ad is inserted in the beginning itself at some random time in the video. Hence, the length of the video doesn’t change suddenly like in scenario one. However, remember that regulations require you to visually indicate that a given piece of media is an ad or not. This is why YouTube ads have “Ad” in a yellow box. This could thus very easily be detected by an adblocker that analyses every frame that the box is present in, and skips that frame. This however, would be a little heavier for the user using the adblocker.

    Trust me lol. There is literally no way you can prevent ad blockers.

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    • Kodemystic@lemmy.kodemystic.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      if the platform decides which and where the ads will run during the video on load I dont see how this could be blocked.

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      • UraniumBlazer@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Look at point 3. I explained this could still be skipped due to them having to visually indicate that it was an ad. This visual indication could easily be skipped by the local user.

        As for them deleting accounts that blocked ads, how would they identify if someone blocked ads? Generate a secret key for every ad, that would be returned every time a user watched ads? This could easily be overcome, as an adblocker could simply extract this key and send it back to the server.

        Trust me… If there was a way to block ad blockers, the greedy capitalists would’ve done so a loooong time ago.

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      • youngGoku@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Google hates this one trick

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• Hangglide@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Why can’t YouTube just render the video on the fly with the relevant add?

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  • UraniumBlazer@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    That IS how YouTube works. Let’s say you are watching a YT video. What your YouTube app/ website does, is that it downloads a certain portion of the video from the server. This small part is called a “buffer”. That’s where the word “buffering” comes from. Now, for the ad to be displayed within the video stream itself, it would need to be downloaded in this buffer somehow. Therefore, while there is a buffer in place, all of my above points would apply.

    Completely eliminate the buffer you say (ie., stream the video bit by bit by reducing the buffering size dramatically) ? Well, then you would need an ultra stable internet connection to YouTube’s servers, without any ping difference. Good luck with that. Especially, good luck with doing that in developing countries, whose populations make up the majority of the world.

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    • Hangglide@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      If that is true, then how is it possible for software to determine the difference between a commercial and content? They are streamed from a different source. I’m suggesting that YouTube could encode the commercial in the same stream as content, and as far as the player is concerned, there would be no difference.

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      • UraniumBlazer@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Read point 3 again. Regulations require companies to visually distinguish between ads and non-ads. That’s why u get the yellow box with “ad” written in it, which indicates that the video that u r watching currently is an ad.

        Software could thus use this factor very easily by scanning the stream for such an indicator. The moment it finds something like this, it skips to a frame where this indicator isn’t present.

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  • ytg@feddit.ch ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Not sure if they have that kind of processing power. Also, couldn’t you modify the player to skip them?

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