[pilaf]

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.

[themafia]

It's wild to me that advertisers are willing to use first party metrics. In any other media business you'd have a certified third party ratings agency to give "audience size" metrics some legitimacy.

Youtube has no incentive to accurately report this data and no apparent accreditation in their methodology.

[kulahan]

Google in general have been resistant to letting anyone see how effective their ads truly are - and most studies that get close tend to show extremely questionable efficacy results.

If Google shows everyone how ineffective ads actually are, they’d crumble.

[jefftk]

This is very much not true: Google has a bunch of options for measuring ad effectiveness, and when I was there (until three years ago) it was very hard to get advertisers to use them.

The two main options advertisers have are:

* Brand Lift Studies: split audience into treatment and control, use surveys on a small fraction of participants to measure impact

* Conversion Lift: again split audience into treatment and control, compare downstream actions like purchases ("conversions")

These both work on YouTube IIRC.

[kulahan]

I am not surprised google has many tools to tell you how great google is doing at using google's data for you.

Anyways, I was mostly referring to sales at physical locations; I assume it's pretty viable to build a system to figure out if someone who previously bought a lot of shein is now buying a lot of temu.

[jefftk]

If Google didn't want people to see "ineffective ads actually are" why would they build and push Brand Lift Studies and Conversion Lift?

Offline purchases are harder, of course, but pretty sure you can still do this: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/9994849

[kulahan]

For the same reason I would show someone a “totally real and honest” screenshot of my company’s finances for some quick cash. Doubly true if there’s effectively no way to be caught.

[lurk2]

> and most studies

Such as?

[girdi]

>It's wild to me that advertisers are willing to use first party metrics.

I agree, and find it even wilder that first party metrics from Meta and Google are trusted by most major advertisers (including ad agencies). I'm talking about six-seven figure budgets spent without any third party validation.

I've seen some studies on click fraud[0], but when advertisers are effectively choosing from a duopoly that has limited incentives not to lie in their metrics, I find it strange that there are no popular, widespread and accessible independent validation tools.

0 – https://www.mdpi.com/2073-431X/10/12/164

[Macha]

There's a whole industry of independent validation tools - DoubleVerify, IAS, Human, etc.

[kelnos]

I feel like it's more "second party" in this case. The first party is the creator, and the tracker/keeper of the view counts is Google. Google certainly isn't a disinterested, certified third party, but they're also not a creator who might make up inflated numbers to get a more lucrative sponsorship.

[rchaud]

Advertisers have 2 options for who to place ads with: Google and Facebook. When you have a monopoly, the customer has to take what it can get. Facebook has overstated its views and clicks for years to charge advertisers more, and faced no consequences for doing so.

[themafia]

This is largely true because this is where the largest volume of traffic comes from; however, it's not exclusive to these two by any means. There are some pretty big Supply Side Platforms and aggregators out there for advertisers to use. This comes into play a lot more often on podcasts and streaming audio, in particular, consider the fleet of Amazon Alexa devices out there.

Many of the advertisers that sell on these platforms are quite familiar with buying ads directly from "old school" media companies. So they have the competence and familiarity to be put off by the metrics but are apparently not in a position to force Google and Facebook to match standards used in other contexts.

[avbanks]

I've noticed this with TikTok and I'm almost certain YouTube 1P metrics are wildly inaccurate in particular views and non-bot comments.

[zahlman]

To me the wild thing is that this ad revenue model could ever have been profitable in the first place.

[roboror]

Click campaigns/conversions and user codes are more important than pure impressions.

[tehwebguy]

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.

[nonameiguess]

Skipping sponsored segments is not necessarily a reflection of hostility. My wife has been subscribed to the Factor meal service for over three years, yet all of my favorite podcasts are constantly hawking it, and I don't particularly feel like sitting through 20 sales pitches a day for something I already purchased. There is unfortunately no way to communicate that information to either the channel owner or the sponsor.

[stevage]

I'm always just amazed how damn long they can be. On some channels I watch they are 2 to 3 minutes long every video. It would be madness to sit through that.

[a2tech]

Google is not getting a cut of that sponsorship money. They don't care if it wrecks your deal. They want your ONLY source of income to be Youtube. If you're fully beholden to Youtube, there will be no escape, no way for you to leave and take your viewership with you.

Remember how Youtube used to be a nice cage with lots of air holes and fun toys to occupy you? Light ad enforcement, tools to help you build your viewership etc? People are starting to feel the pinch of those being removed. That cool room is starting to look like what it really is--an industrial cage.

[Andrex]

I think it's less ominous than that.

Skip Ahead is only for Premium subscribers. The logic probably being native-ads/sponsorships are in fact ads, and Premium users are paying for an ad-free experience.

[PeterisP]

It's interesting that I just read an inteview with YouTube CEO (https://stratechery.com/2025/an-interview-with-youtube-ceo-n...) who mentioned that YouTube fully intends to start getting a cut out of that sponsorship money ("to align interests better").

[eastbound]

> They want your ONLY source of income to be Youtube.

I’m not sure. They want influencers to make profit using their platform, so they want to make them rich. On the viewcount, a skipped sponsor still looks like a view. No sponsor is going to look at the proportion of watching each part of the video, they just care about the view counter.

What Youtube may want, though, is for paying customers to be able to skip ads. “If you pay you should have no ads”.

[kelnos]

> What Youtube may want, though, is for paying customers to be able to skip ads. “If you pay you should have no ads”.

It feels rare that I agree with Google on anything these days, but if that is the case... sounds fair.

[Workaccount2]

YouTube doesn't have to defend itself. Read this thread and understand how shitty/entitled it's users are.

Then these adult children go an complain there are no competitors. No shit, you scoff at subscriptions and wear your ad-block like a badge of honor. Who the hell would invest in making a platform for non-paying users?

[godshatter]

Strangely enough, I do feel entitled to download data from YouTube using standard protocols on a standard port. It's not like I'm breaking in or anything.

[johanyc]

> 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

[recursive]

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]

The best creators build these ad reads wearing different clothes.

[everforward]

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.

[nozzlegear]

Truly one of the best updates they've made to the YouTube app on Apple TV (and presumably other tv operating systems) of all time. Just one tap of the remote and we can skip all of the "sponsored by Made In" nonsense.

Edit: I guess this is a YouTube premium feature?

[downrightmike]

in video you can just hit a number to go to the next chunk 1,2,3,4,5 etc. just hit 8 or 9 if you want to see if there is anything of value in a 10 minute video that should have been 30 seconds, but youtube wants 10 minutes

[k12sosse]

It's actually [0-9] percentage of the video length times 9, more or less

[secondcoming]

Surely YT know if a video has sponsored content and so can refuse to play the video - or even not suggest it - if the user is using adblockers?

[SilverbeardUnix]

YT would start a revolt among Youtubers if they did this.