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YouTube looks to be testing server-side ad injection to counter ad blockers (9to5google.com)

submitted 5 months ago by AnActOfCreation@programming.dev to c/technology@lemmy.world

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YouTube is testing server-side ad injection to counter ad blockers, integrating ads directly into videos to make them indistinguishable from the main content.
This new method complicates ad blocking, including tools like SponsorBlock, which now face challenges in accurately identifying and skipping sponsored segments.
The feature is currently in testing and not widely rolled out, with YouTube encouraging users to subscribe to YouTube Premium for an ad-free experience.

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[–] mercano@lemmy.world 5 points 5 months ago (3 children)

I don’t get why so many people begrudge YouTube for trying make money. They serve up 5TB of video data every second. Somebody’s got to pay for all of that. They know ads suck, that’s why they sell no ad subscriptions.

[–] Pavidus@lemmy.world 15 points 5 months ago (1 children)

YouTube makes 8 billion per quarter selling ads. I think they will be able to eat tonight.

[–] Sekoia@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 5 months ago

Out of curiosity, I looked up the numbers. This is correct, they make 9.2 billion per quarter from ads and 10.7 billion from subscriptions. I can't find expenses per-segment, but in 2023 their total "Cost of revenues" was 37 billion. I doubt everything other than youtube costs less than 17 billion, so they're definitely making a profit.

Source: https://abc.xyz/assets/95/eb/9cef90184e09bac553796896c633/2023q4-alphabet-earnings-release.pdf

[–] snooggums@midwest.social 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Google used investor funding to create youtube at a loss for years to crush any competition, so we should be mad that there isn't an easy option to just switch to a comparable alternative.

[–] 1rre@discuss.tchncs.de 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Ok, but equally any competition would need to be profitable earlier, you can't complain you got a service operating at a loss which is now operating at a profit when that's exactly what any alternative you'd feasibly switch to would do

[–] snooggums@midwest.social 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Google used investor funding to create youtube at a loss for years to crush any competition

There is a difference between needing to operate at a loss when first starting a business because it is necessary and using funding to prop yourself up so much that is undermines all of the competition. Like the difference between being a very successful business and abusing a monopoly.

[–] 1rre@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 5 months ago

Oh yeah I absolutely agree with monopoly abuse being a bad thing with a huge caveat that it's so much worse for essential services and not quite as bad for extras, like youtube. I personally can't see any competition to youtube being able to provide a better service - it's in a similar niche to Netflix where they were great until they got competition at which point the userbase and content fragmented, which meant they had to provide a worse service to make money as the content rights agreements made it into several small monopolies and so they were literally unable to compete, which is frankly worse