This week YouTube hosted Brandcast 2025 in which it revealed how marketers could make better use of the platform to connect with customers.
A few new so-called innovations were announced at the event but one has caught the attention of the internet – Peak Points. This new product makes use of Gemini to detect “the most meaningful, or ‘peak’, moments within YouTube’s popular content to place your brand where audiences are the most engaged”.
Essentially, YouTube will use Gemini and probably the heatmap generated on YouTube videos by people skipping to popular points, to determine where to place advertising. Anybody who has grown up watching terrestrial television where adverts arrive as a way to build suspense will understand how annoying Peak Points could become.
I swear to god, one of these days the update will be “Today Youtube has announced that they will be removing the annoying videos from their ads”.
Once they finally lock down the player so it’s impossible to block or skip ads, I look forward to coding a script which screen records each video on my sub list, feeds each video with ads into a purpose made classifier model which labels the ads, stitches out of ads with FFmpeg, and then uploads them to my jellyfin server.
I love you. Please spread it fucking everywhere when you do.
I really wanted to make a system that would recognize if it’s seen the same 30-second clip before (since ads are always repeats) by a shared signature that would just play something else or silence for the length of the ad on the client side, especially for live sports streams.
since ads are always repeat
For now. Netflix announced generative AI ads for 2026
Yeah this would still hit 100% of ads that have happened before now. And all linear tv ads on streams. Seriously willing to build it if anyone wants to work on it with me. Pm me
More enshittification!
Because advertisers want viewers to associate their products with feelings of annoyance, aggravation, and frustration?
But you’ve heard of me!
/s
Revanced.
It won’t bother me at all.
Or just stop being dependent on Google and use PeerTube and Odysee.
It’s your choice.
I get it. But, like Peertube is kinda limited. At least when I was using it, which was pretty recently. I’ll check out Odysee.
Revanced is basically the same thing. Just less shitty.
Google seems bound and determined to destroy itself trying to escalate it’s profits from “staggering” to “colossal.” The search is so bad AI is actually better, and that’s saying something. And now they want to enshittify YouTube? Okay. I’m sure it won’t die right away, but this will be one of the thousands cuts.
laughs in uBlock Origin
Laughs in FreeTube.
… Revanced
SmartTube
…yt-dlp
I just pay for premium. Worth every penny with the amount of YouTube we watch.
Thank you for giving Google money.
With your endearing support, Google is paying less attention to us so we can continue getting the same content for free.
No problem, I like supporting all the neat content creators I follow while others are happy to rip them off because they feel entitled to free content.
And don’t give me the “support them on patreon” line because a) I already do and b) ain’t no way the majority of you who pirate YouTube are donating money to everyone you follow.
I donate to the top percentile of those I follow, at least.
RedLetterMedia ain’t getting ad revenue. They curse too much and Mike is an alcoholic.
but to put it plainly, I’m morally bankrupt on victimless crime and I know they’re taken care of.
again, thank you.
If you pay premium, then you have to be logged in and tracked and spied on, even more data get sold. You pay them to sell your data!
minor krill issue
Yep - I legit haven’t seen an ad on YT in years. I also, just the other day, ran across another filter that disables the stupid shorts since I don’t care for that format or YT pushing it on me all the time. Almost usable platform now.
Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t YouTube still running year over year at a loss?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube#Finances
In Q2 2024, ad revenue rose to $8.66 billion, up 13% on Q1.[321]
I don’t think so.
Revenue is not profit.
Yes, I know, but I doubt 8.6 billions per quarter aren’t enough to make a profit.
They haven’t stated their operating costs, so you’re only speculating.
Operating costs are not known with that granularity, to my knowledge, but it’s a good guess. Best anybody can tell Youtube is 10-ish percent of all of Alphabet’s ad revenue and they have a subscription model as well. Not to mention the data gathering for AI training, plus all the intangible benefits from owning all the video on the Internet, from using Youtube tech for Google Drive stored videos to… you know, owning all the video on the Internet. And all of that without investing the ungodly amount of money Netflix and the other streaming competitors do on content. People just… upload that crap.
However their internal accounting breaks down, I’m pretty sure nobody thinks Youtube is bleeding money.
YouTube was almost bankrupted because the cost of storage, servers and bandwidth greatly overran the ad revenue. Every idiot with 2 subscribers uploading dozens of hours of content cost them a ton of money. It is easy to underestimate how expensive video streaming infrastructure is.
Yes, if you re-read my previous comment I said I don’t think they are losing money.
Facebook has spent something like 70 billion dollars on the “metaverse” with nothing to show for it, so it’s very possible.
Last I checked Alphabet had something like $60 billion in profit.
At this point, they probably consider YouTube to be a loss leader while they siphon up everyone’s data.
I guess that’s what happens when you hire the top minds from yahoo
uBlock Origin zaps all of the ads for me on my laptop.
My phone too
I use Firefox. Is Ublock Origin still effective on YouTube since Google shoved out Manifest V3 onto Chromium-based browsers?
Firefox is not chromium based. You can install unlock origin and have no ads.
Yes, I already do.
I asked because I don’t know if anyone who does use a Chromium browser has noticed an uptick in ads.
Don’t use a chromium based browser.
I did say I use Firefox. I was asking those who don’t.
It works for me, yes. At least on Windows 11. Forgive my technical ineptitude.
Shit like this is honestly why the FCC needs authority to regulate things on the US internet.
There was a time in the long past where television networks were forced to normalize audio so that commercials weren’t so much louder than the shows, which was happening for a while.
The internet just continues to be a fucking free-for-all of all the worst and most anti-user-centric ideas that exist. Just plying every bad idea that makes the internet difficult to use.
That’s a task for a different administration.
They don’t have that authority‽
There’s been this tug-of-war between Republicans and Democrats at the FCC for like a solid decade or more now about whether the internet is classified as a “communications service” or an “information service.” If it’s classified as a communications service then the FCC has regulatory authority and can do things like enforce net neutrality. If it’s classified as an information service, then the Federal Comminications Commission does not have authority to regulate it. The Biden FCC had been working to bring back net neutrality, but all that is pretty much out the window with a GOP toady in charge of the FCC now.
It really needs to be codified by congress to have sticking power for it to be regulated by the FCC or the tug-of-war for how to refulate the internet will continue indefinitely.
I’m fairly sure the Communications Commission regulates information services. Even this guy at the notorious Federalist Society’s blog says it does.
We might need a few reforms to our economic model where the stupidest sociopaths alive get lots of money and teachers and nurses do not.
I don’t find Nebula to be an adequate replacement for youtube, but if they ever figure out how to keep me from blocking ads, Ima gonna change my mind.
Use grayjay.app, they have it for desktop too. No ads, sponsorblock built in, and has multiple platforms in one place.
This is fucking hilariously evil and short-sighted.
You just described end-stage capitalism
Wow. Fuuuuuuuuck YouTube.
Also, Firefox plus Ublock Origin makes ads on YouTube go away.
That’s not the link for Firefox
Yeaaaahhh, not feeling Marc Andreessen and the uptick in spying and upselling coming from the Mozilla foundation lately.
Then go for it’s forks Waterfox or Librewolf?
Brave is tied to Peter Thiel, the other PayPal cunt using his wealth to make the world worse.
And your alternative is the cryptobro farm Chromium skin?
I mean, we’re grading on a curve, I guess, but… I think I’m sticking with FF for now.
Man, branding and PR are weird.
Crazy shit.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/28/opinion/marc-andreessen-manifesto-techno-optimism.html:
In this vision, wealthy technologists are not just leaders of their business but keepers of the social order, unencumbered by what Mr. Andreessen labels “enemies”: social responsibility, trust and safety, tech ethics, to name a few. As for the rest of us — the unwashed masses, people who have either “unskilled” jobs or useless liberal arts degrees or both — we exist mostly as automatons whose entire value is measured in productivity.
Seems like a nice guy. 👍
Brandon Eich and Peter Thiel are also very questionable folk. If you prefer to stick with a Chromium, may I recommend Vivaldi? It’s made by people involved in old Opera (before that became a chromium skin as well).
Did not know Thiel was an investor, actually. If we’re judging software based on the personality of people we’ve read random crap about in the press then that’d indeed be disqualifying.
However, I’d argue maybe that’s not a great way to pretend you have any agency in an aggressively oligopolistic environment.
We may need to stop making choices based on knee-jerk personality-driven branding crap and start focusing on systemic issues. Just… you know, as a species.
Unfortunately, as long as our species put abstract and overall pretty useless concepts such as wealth before survival and basic decency towards each other, I don’t think we ever tackle systematic issues.
He is not in Mozilla as far as I know, so what’s your point?
In fact I don’t think he ever worked for Mozilla besides just making Mosaic/Netscape. Does @[email protected] not realize “Mozilla” stands for “Mosaic Killer”?
Don’t know if it’s a joke, but the name Mozilla should be Mosaic+Godzilla
That’s what I would go with, personally, because it’s at least helping keep one alternative browser base alive instead of giving Google the entire ecosystem of everything being based on Chromium. But that’s just me.
