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YouTube looks to be testing server-side ad injection to counter ad blockers (9to5google.com)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

236 comments fedilink hide all child comments

YouTube is testing server-side ad injection to counter ad blockers, integrating ads directly into videos to make them indistinguishable from the main content.
This new method complicates ad blocking, including tools like SponsorBlock, which now face challenges in accurately identifying and skipping sponsored segments.
The feature is currently in testing and not widely rolled out, with YouTube encouraging users to subscribe to YouTube Premium for an ad-free experience.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago (11 children)

It sounds like this would be easy for tools like SponsorBlock to label and skip segments as ads. However, it would be tough on smaller channels where people might not be labeling them as such.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago (1 children)

If only I had a client with support for fast forward... Oh right. I do. Neat.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (5 children)

Some people said that skipping is blocked during the ad. But if that is the case I am sure either the timestamp is predictable or somewhere on the client side you could find the information about the timestamp.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago

My client pre-downloads videos, so I can fast forward and rewind at will.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago

As is, I can’t make it through a 30 sec ad. I will peace out 100% of the time.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Guess I'll just be blocking YouTube.com on my DNS server and all subsequent Google URLs. I am fed up with their nonsense anyway.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Sponsor block has entered the chat

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

How likely we can defeat it with something similar to YT's own ContentID system? We download a tons of ads, process it with feature extraction, and match it on the fly to carve out those ads. A similar system to SB can be used to let people mark where the ads is, process, and share.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago (5 children)

Ads should be properly labeled in most market, so it should be trivial to detect what segment is ad and what isn't. The real question is, what to do, and if the server refuses to serve the remainder of the video before the ads duration, what will it be replaced with.