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.
Youtube… Youtube… Oh, yes, I remember Youtube. That was fun to use half a decade ago or so.
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
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 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.
minor krill issue
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.
You’re right, of course, however as consumers we’re put into the position of having to support an absolutely atrocious corporate surveillance company AND creators, or neither. Creators are entangling themselves that way. Given the option, I will choose the latter every time. When creators want to make their content available on other platforms, I do support them there.
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.
“pirate YouTube” lmfao
bet you’re one of those people that pirate oxygen
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.
SmartTube
…yt-dlp
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.
I guess that’s what happens when you hire the top minds from yahoo
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.
Facebook has spent something like 70 billion dollars on the “metaverse” with nothing to show for it, so it’s very possible.
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.
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 mean it must be? The only income it has is based on ads from Google.
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.
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.
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.
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. 👍
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 @resipsaloquitur@lemm.ee not realize “Mozilla” stands for “Mosaic Killer”?
Don’t know if it’s a joke, but the name Mozilla should be Mosaic+Godzilla
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.
Crazy shit.
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.
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.
oh, is that human also related to paypal? I know it as a (former) big facebook investor
PayPal is a merge of Confinity (where Thiel is one of the founders for) and X.com (another online financials company at that time, and we all know who is obsessed with X).
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.
It works for me, yes. At least on Windows 11. Forgive my technical ineptitude.
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.
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 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.
Because they want viewers to associate their products with feelings of annoyance, aggravation, and frustration?
But you’ve heard of me!
/s
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.
Google’s been deploying engagement models before anyone even knew the name OpenAI.
This is oldschool machine learning, driven by viewing metrics from users. Gemini is just a brand.
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.
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.
We need more comments with endnotes
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.
Doesn’t matter because they get a cut every time they let their friends lie to the board. Executives get a cut every time they seem like they’re approving something. No one is personally liable for the lie. And those selling the lie get bonuses on every contract until they can sell the company to the next bag holder. It’s all imaginary power plays to funnel money.
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.
deleted by creator
…no? It doesn’t.
deleted by creator
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.
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.
And artificial intelligence is still not basic programming.
Machine learning is artificial intelligence…
Its a subset of artificial intelligence, not the only type.
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.
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.
Because it’s just that simple!
some of us are not going to youtube to watch something, anything, as a distraction, but to watch a very specific thing. yes, even after google tried to kill that sentiment several ways including botching the subscription system
Revanced is basically the same thing. Just less shitty.
Enough is never enough.
Firefox + uBlock origin
Use grayjay.app, they have it for desktop too. No ads, sponsorblock built in, and has multiple platforms in one place.
+1 for grayjay
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
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.
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
“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.
I love you. Please spread it fucking everywhere when you do.
classifier model which labels the ads
Not exactly my idea, 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.
More enshittification!
