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.
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
I just pay for premium. Worth every penny with the amount of YouTube we watch.
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!
Plus the first-party app is atrocious. The third party ones are way better.
Ya @cattywampas@lemm.ee let’s send them complaints on this
They gotta give us a way to watch adfree without spying on us
minor krill issue
I’m with you, paying is better than supporting the Ad business.
I just wish YouTube did not treat paying customers like criminals with the app based restrictions.
Why pay when there’s a free option?
The free option is not sustainable and does not reward the correct customer/business relationship.
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.
laughs in invidious. google doesn’t even get to know I’m watching anything
No, I want them to know. Tell Cersei I did it.
Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t YouTube still running year over year at a loss?
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.
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.
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.
I mean it must be? The only income it has is based on ads from Google.
I don’t understand why this needs AI. I’m guessing this is just more marketing nonsense. You can already see the “most engaged moments” by simply hovering over the timeline.
That’s because it doesn’t. Just don’t tell the investors.
At some point you would think the investors would get upset about all the lying…
You know. I feel like its a bit obvious to say but a system where corporations are operated top-down by a group of individuals whose only interest is the profitability of said corporation with little to no consideration in other aspects of the corporation (the employees for one) is a pretty bad system. I remember reading that Henry Ford wanted to drop the price of the Model T to make it even more of an everyman car. Two of his top investors took him to court over it. This isn’t to say Ford was some sort of paragon; but it strikes me sometime, the degree to which the naked greed of some people pierces the capitalist veil of competitive innovation for social betterment.
This only strikes us plebes when we find out about it. It is common knowledge in economist circles:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shareholder_primacy
The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Its Profits: a company has no social responsibility to the public or society; its only responsibility is to its shareholders https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine
This has only been recently challenged as a PR attempt to rebrand it into “stakeholder capitalism”
Also, not related but equally horrifying: in macroeconomics there is a target of unemployment of around 5%, aka full employment is to be avoided: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NAIRU
It’s worth noting that Dodge (yes, that Dodge) were the ones who took Ford to court over it. If you want the reason why shareholders come first, blame Dodge.
Riiight. Id like to learn more about Dodge; I’m gomna check if there’s a Ken Bursesque History of Dodge documentary.
Edit: there is no such documentary.
Edit 2: But there is a fairly decent one.
Ford owed them dividends since they had shares from when they worked for him. And the Dodge Bros asked for these dividends but Ford basically already spent it on cutting wages, building factories, lower the price of cars, kissing puppies etc. All of which, as you may have noticed, is shit that investors (i.e. the Dodge Bros) hate in the short term, while, of course, expanding his business in the long term. Ford had a plan to buy them out, ya see. And, honestly, I can understand why they took him to court for that. Cuz he purposely made decisions that went against their interests as investors because they were his competitor. And the Dodge Bros, they’re not some pampered plutocrats, they came from a fairly impoverished backround - the details of which I won’t bore you with, as they are the same as every other rags to riches Americana. Though I do think its worth mentioning that they were not initially accepted among the social elite as they would drink beers and roughhouse with the men.¹
All of this is very interesting, but it kind of muddies the water in terms of serving as an example of greedy investors forcing the corporate hand. But what if the hand that guides the corporate hand is not the investors’ but the invisible hand of the market?² And the Dodge Bros and Ford are just puppets to the invisible hand³ as it guides them along with a relationship to the wellbeing of actual humans⁴ that could be characterised as arbitrary at best and malicious at worst. Maybe that’s the lesson here.
That and that Henry Ford is a scary motherfucker.
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Which is, I suppose, another rags to riches Americana story, but its one that’s pretty charming, a kind of, still one of the boys attitude, a dream that you can become wealthy and not be innately corrupted by that wealth. Like the Dodge Bros eventually were.
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Which, looking at it now, I appreciate is a contrived metaphor, but it sounded good in my head.
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The invisible hand is doing one of those Godfather cover art pupeteer with strings and shit. They’re not sock puppets. I did consider making a fist-of-capitalism-up-your-ass joke here but it sidetracks the issue a bit, and its a bit sexist/kink shamey.
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And plants and trees and animals.
We need more comments with endnotes
. . . Yet
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It’s a funny story because Ford was suspecting them of building a rival car company so he wasn’t doing it entirely out of altruistic pursuits. He wanted to them to get lower profits from their Ford investments. Whenever you think capitalists have reached the peak of greed, they truly innovate.
Too greedy. They want all the money so bad they will believe any conman.
I mean… an “if” statement is technically AI, so investors can see the buzz word and all Google has to code is “if most engaged moment, then play ad” lol
That’s not AI.
It’s a computer (Artificial) making a choice that is better than random (Intelligence)
What it is not is a LLM (aka chatbot). It isn’t even any type of neural network. Does not make it any less AI though
It’s a computer (Artificial) making a choice that is better than random (Intelligence)
That’s not what AI is, that’s just programming. AI implies the software was trained on a dataset in order to make pseudo-decisions on its own about the best way to do things.
That’s machine learning, AI just means artificial intelligence.
Machine learning is artificial intelligence…
Its a subset of artificial intelligence, not the only type.
And artificial intelligence is still not basic programming.
No, it’s a computer making a computation. The programmer is the one using intelligence by choosing the appropriate computation for the situation at hand.
conditional and logical expressions have been the foundation of computing since the very beginning. you are using a definition of “AI” that is completely divorced from that history.
That only works after the video is out and has usage statistics.
This could theoretically start to identify those moments before the video is public.
They already do it in Podcasts and it is usually extremely ham-fisted. The presenter will be mid sentence talking about something and suddenly IMPROVE YOUR DIET WITH FACTOR
Or stand up specials. So much comedy on YouTube and they just drop Dick Pills TM commercials in the middle of punchlines.
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…no? It doesn’t.
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LOL what? No, you just program the software to place it. No AI required.
If the analytics cross over a certain threshold, trigger an ad.
This is extremely simple and does not require an LLM.
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 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
“Netflix members pay as much attention to midroll ads as they do to the shows and movies themselves,” Amy Reinhard, president of advertising at Netflix, said, according to the publication.
This is so hilarious when you think about it.
Are their movies and shows so bad that people are watching ads with as much attention?
Or do they mean “pay as much attention” by ignoring the content altogether as they only run Netflix as background noise while they do something else?
😂
They very literally create shows and movies to be background noise and still be an understandable story. That’s why a lot of their originals are so bad if you sit down to watch them normally.
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
Fwiw I kinda wanna see what awful slop their generative ai ads will be. Literally the first time in years I’ve been mildly interested to see an ad. Not that I’ll stop blocking ads to see them, but, mildly interested.
classifier model which labels the ads
Not exactly my idea as I read about it somewhere when news about YT supposedly serving server-side ads started to spread.
You could record the video several times and check for differences between streams and then cut them off, might be more resource intensive in network and storage, but I think it’s still cheaper than a neural network hogging the GPU.
I think it’s funny that Google thinks putting an ad in when someone is most engaged with a video will be an effective advertising technique. So someone’s going to be absorbed in the video, be presented with an ad while engaging with it and be happy that they were interrupted to be served an ad? Sounds like a great formula for pissing off your users.
For YouTube, viewers aren’t the users, advertisers are.
It’s the same idiotic MBA reasoning that keeps bringing the popup back in some new form every few years. No, it wasn’t the technical implementation of the delivery mechanism we were upset about, you absolute fucking morons.
It’s always jarring loading a news site without ad blocking. The whole thing just seems cancerous, and that’s before you can even start reading the story.
I recently switched phones and forgot I didn’t have an adblocker installed yet. Clicked on an article and holy shit the modern mobile web is a toxic hellscape without it…
your phones also heats up, and then it gets slow. had to install adblockers to preserve the life of the phone batteries.
Pretty wild seeing an ad for UL out in the wild in these comments, you an electrician?
I got my MTR in UL 508A a couple years ago
Architect, so in the neighborhood… I mostly interact with UL in the context of fire-rated assemblies, though.
Ahh my context is all related to industrial electrical systems. It gets really fun when UL and NFPA 79 start to conflict with each other.
Yeah let’s just do an ad break during the most interesting part of EVERY video. Sounds amazing… not
Yes but… YouTube its maybe the One and only online service that have no competition so… They dont really care
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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.
Reading is hard. My advice still stands for everyone else though.
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Willing to bet uBlock Origin will make it so I never see a single one of these ads.
Firefox forever.
And Revanced for android is just 😘🤌 chef’s kiss.
I’m a Newpipe man myself but Revanced is also fantastic.
Hey, Newpipe’s a banger too, just not what I found first. I fully support anything that takes away from Google’s profits
Cool, I’ll have a look!
Can you get it for iPhone?
I don’t have ios but I ran across this at some point trying to find a yt app for a friend. Been awhile since the last update so I’m not sure if it’s still effective and I can’t test it
Youtube has ads?
When I have to visit it sans adblocker it is like a dumpster fire.
Yeah, if Google ever effectively blocks/bypasses my ad blocker, I’ll stop watching. They charge too much for premium for how much I watch, and I’d rather go without than deal with all those ads.
the only way they do is, do what twitch does, but its prohibitively expensive to do that. something about putting the ad inside the video coding?
I block ads on Twitch too.
On my tv, yes :(
Try SmartTube Next
What brand?
I recently encountered tizenbrew.
So worth installing
Do you have the option to install Android apps onto your TV? Or if it has another OS with the option?
I do! I’m actually using an NVidia Shield. Which runs android TV
I tried last year to install a recommended one but it required that I download a third-party APK. And I would have to jump through a meant hoops to be able to install it on this device when I was poking around then. If it’s not on the Play store, apparently it’s rather difficult to install?
You’re right in that you’d have to install an APK, from outside of the Play Store, however if you’re aware of the right sources of the right apps your security should be fine (you can disable the ability to install apps from unknown sources after you’ve got the YouTube alternative app, without affecting it, if you’re worried about that).
There are a few steps, which are usually straight forward, listed here: https://github.com/yuliskov/SmartTube
If you follow that link it should have further links for an installation tutorial (they also link a YouTube tutorial to make things easier).
If you do go down that route, it’s a much more pleasant experience imho. No ads, Sponsorblock for in-video ad segments, complete control over quality of video, audio, options to manually force specific codecs, etc.
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.
Wow. Fuuuuuuuuck YouTube.
Also, Firefox plus Ublock Origin makes ads on YouTube go away.
And revanced youtube for android does the same.
It doesn’t make the “turn off your adblock” popup go away though.
I’ve never seen that. YMMV, I guess.
It might be something they’re testing. I had it and then it went away for a bit and now its back. I emulate android on my PC just so I can use an app that has no ads.
Make sure your ublock lists are up to date, sometimes the extension gets a bit stuck and needs a nudge to update them.
It’s an arms race and Google hasn’t won it yet.
Firefox X UBlock Origin X Sponsorblock X Bring Back Youtube Dislike. Thank fuck for those Devs.
The removal of YouTube dislike is still fucking infuriating to me. I get it: now I have to watch the video to find out if it’s a piece of shit, and that’s exactly what they want, but holy fuck what a shitty decision designed to waste my time and maximize their chances to flash an ad in my face.
Absolutely. It sucks so much for me to not be able to see that most people DO disagree with a video, and all I can see is the idiots that did. So frustrating.
Why use Gemini and AI when they already have a feature in youtube where they show the “most watched moments”…?
I see the contest to find the world’s biggest cunt continues unabated.
What will they think of next week?
I would argue that this will be far more obnoxious than television commercials. YouTube already places ads directly in the midst of sentences or even words. At least television usually cut to commercial after the line was finished.
This will annoy me to the point of dropping YouTube altogether.
YouTube will put multiple ad breaks into a popular 8 min video. Which is why I use playtube and/or Firefox with ad block unless I’m too hungover to fully function
i tried unblocking my yt to support a creator, but the amount of ads is just too much.
How to ensure huge swathes of the population will never ever buy your product out of sheer spite
That number is still SIGNIFICANTLY less than those who won’t do anything. Us using ad blockers doesn’t even account for a percentage of what they rake in from those without them.
Not going to help when you have a monopoly over the user-generated content field like YT and by extension Google basically does.
On youtube, you’re not the customer. You’re the product being sold
