[imglorp]

I wonder if YT will begin inserting ads directly into the video file server side. If you download the file to watch elsewhere, you get the whole package. Viewers can skip the ads manually, or wait for someone to write a program to detect scene changes and hope to skip the ads automatically. Then we're back to the TIVO model.

[thatcat]

I doubt they will do this because they serve custom ads to each user, and to split and merge video files is considerably less efficient than just loading different files.

[Something1234]

Can't some video formats be concatenated? Something like this pipeline for serving the ad:

    cat $(select_ad_file $user) $video_file

[thatcat]

I know ffmpeg can do that, i've never tried just using cat.

An additional reason for not serving ads in the video file is that their ad clients probably want to know if someone watched it or not. By loading ad as a file associated with the ad client it's easy to verify that someone watched the ad and didn't just click out after 1s, etc.

[NTripleOne]

Not sure why you're being downvoted when that's entirely true; knowing what audience has actually engaged with your ad can be just as (if not moreso) valuable as an engagement in the first place.