Seriously this was very surprising. I’ve been experimenting with GrayJay since it was announced and I largely think it’s a pretty sweet app. I know there are concerns over how it isn’t “true open source” but it’s a hell of a lot more open than ReVanced. Plus, I like the general design and philosophy of the app.
I updated the YouTube backend recently and to my surprise and delight they had added support for SponsorBlock. However, when I went to enable it, it warned me “turning this on harms creators” and made me click a box before I could continue.
Bruh, you’re literally an ad-blocking YouTube frontend. What kind of mental gymnastics does it take to be facilitating ad-blocking and then at the same time shame the end-user for using an extension which simply automates seeking ahead in videos. Are you seriously gonna tell me that even without Sponsorblock, if I skip ahead past the sponsored ad read in a video, that I’m “harming the creator”?
Sponsorblock does not harm creators. Youtube has no method of detecting when a sponsored segment is skipped, so the creator still gets their sponsorship money. A person who is using sponsorblock is extremely unlikely to use the sponsored products even if they did watch the ad, so the creator isn’t losing out on any affiliate money either.
YouTube absolutely can see which parts of videos people are actually engaging with. So can creators. And sponsors can request engagement metrics as part of their sponsorship deals.
Advertisers care about impressions and engagement. A person simply watching a sponsored segment is an impression. If people’s impression metrics for sponsored segments start dropping, they become less attractive to sponsors as they knew they’re going to get fewer impressions as part of the deal.
It may, or may not, be a very small impact but it is an impact nonetheless.
If nobody is watching sponsored segments (which we’ve established: YouTube itsself, creators, and sponsors can track) then companies don’t have any incentive to sponsor videos, and creators no longer get revenue from sponsorships. Sure, this is a very end of the line example, because there’s always going to be someone who doesn’t have sponsorblock installed and can’t be bothered to skip the segment.
Just FYI for all the people who keep repeating this ad-nauseam it doesn’t apply to third party apps like Newpipe and grayjay which DO NOT send analytics data. If anyone wants to make arguments against sponsorblock they also can’t support apps and front-ends which strip the Analytics from the video because without them you add no watch time or metrics, so it’s a hypocritical argument.
I mean, it applies equally here. Using apps that strip metrics and analytics, has a similar effect to using sponsorblock. I don’t think I was arguing against sponsorblock I was saying facts about it. I use sponsorblock, I use grayjay, and I pay content creators.
The thread is about grayjay saying that using sponsorblock on grayjay will hurt creators. If grayjay doesn’t send metrics, then any metrics sponsorblock might mess up are already messed up by watching on grayjay.
Advertisers that care a lot about engagement use CTR instead of CPM. CTR enables advertisers to keep track of engagement and lie about real engagement numbers to save costs. If advertisers rely on video segment statistics, creators can fake the statistics to earn more money. So advertisers rarely measure their payout based on unverifiable information. And people that use SponsorBlock wouldn’t buy it, even without SponsorBlock. Or in other words: Most creators can ignore SponsorBlock.
I agree with you that clickthrough rate is a far more useful metric for advertisers, and is probably more widely used in sponsorship deals.
Creators faking impression metrics would be followed by the advertisers seeing weirdly low clickthrough ratios, seeing that somethings up, and the creator losing future deals from that advertiser, so it’s not something I would expect creators to do unless they think they’re smarter than multi million/billion dollar companies advertising departments.
Where does this assertion come from that people that use sponsorblock are somehow never going to buy products? People keep saying it but I just don’t get it. We live in a world where people buy things. Some products are relevant to some people and some aren’t to other people. I use sponsorblock and adblock, and if I were to somehow see an advert for a product that seemed like it perfectly fit a need that I had, I’d definitely consider getting the product.
I use SponsorBlock. Ads have an influence on me, but usually with a negative impact on whatever they sell, so it’s beneficial for them that I don’t see their ads.
If I was looking for a fantasy-themed, turn-based role-playing gacha game, and a specific game annoys the fuck out of me with their massive marketing budget, they’re automatically on my blacklist. I’ll proactively ignore the game in my market research and exclude the game, the game’s company and publisher from my Google search results with the uBlacklist browser extension.
If it’s a SaaS and they charge a premium for SSO, they get a once in a lifetime opportunity to land on a public wall of shame that some sysadmins use to preemptively filter out software vendors from their purchasing process. So it’s a really shitty idea to advertise crap to the wrong people.
Okay, sure, that’s a nice story about yourself, but like, this doesn’t address the core of your assertion that people who use sponsorblock won’t buy products if they see ads for them. It doesn’t seem like the two are actually inherently related at all. (People who don’t want to watch adverts) are not necessarily (People who don’t buy products).
Why do they have to prove that? You backed up the assertion that sponsorblock hurts creators with the mere unlikely possibility that sponsors might be able to see metrics, how does their single anecdotal bit of evidence that people using sponsorblock are the kinds of people that won’t click ads anyway not pass the same muster?
Admittedly they’re both bad evidence, so why are we treating yours as better?
I mean, sure, you can say I made a bad argument, I don’t entirely disagree given the context was originally about grayjay, but at this point I’m not even making my argument anymore I’m just trying to figure out why it seems to be a shared view. I want to understand, y’know?
And I don’t really think it’s fair to say my assertion was only backed up by that unlikely possibility, but I don’t fully stand behind my original argument in this context anymore anyway
People who use sponsorblock or other kinds of adblock are the kinds of people who get annoyed by watching ads. I suppose it’s possible some of those are short because the ads are working and they keep spending money, but in my experience and the experiences I’ve seen discussed elsewhere, it seems to generally be that they are annoyed because they’re not interested in what the ads are selling and wouldn’t be sold on them anyway.
YouTube gets metrics on which parts of videos are being played. You can see this in the player where it’ll display things like “most played segment” on the timeline.
See my other comments on the matter they don’t, not when using apps like this, it’s literally by design as they are meant to be privacy friendly so they naturally won’t send analytics data.
In theory the sponsor could demand access to the statistics showing watch time and pay differently because of that.
I doubt it happens though.
YouTube is unbearable without it.