SponsorBlock – skip sponsor segments on YouTube

As a YouTuber, I’m conflicted about this. My main channel (non-tech) is small, but is monetised, and YouTube see fit to throw me a _very_ variable amount of money every month. CPMs are down right now so revenue has tanked along with it, it’ll pick back up at some point, but the variability is itself the pain point. My videos are relatively expensive and time consuming to make, but people seem to find them useful, and even enjoyable. The occasional (relevant) sponsor read or similar has been a huge help in providing some stability in the past, and I know for many channels it’s the main source of income since YPP revenue share can be so volatile.

I do worry that if this takes off it will just result in those sponsors pulling their budgets for this type of advertising, and it’ll be another nail in the coffin for creators. Sure many of us also do patreon etc but that’s never really sat right with me personally (and see also the post on HN just today about Apple coming for a revenue split there for another creator-hostile storm brewing).

On the other hand, I totally get the hatred of “the usual suspect” sponsors (VPNs, low-quality learning platforms etc) that get done to death because of their aggressive sponsor budgets and not-unreasonable deals. Those get shoehorned into a ton of videos and it’s a shame, but a blunt instrument like this is likely to kill off sponsorships as a whole, not just those bad ones.

The main area that SponsorBlock blocks are the type of sponsor read that typically are recorded separated from the video. Those are never going to be safe again blocking and it likely that most companies that uses that kind of services knows this. They are low quality, low effect, and thus (likely) fairly cheap.

At the other end of the spectrum, we got paid content and sponsored gear. He who pays the piper calls the tune. It turns the issue to a balancing act where too much sponsored content will likely ruin the viewer ship (and artistic freedom/integrity/happiness/extra), but in turn it provide an income. SponsorBlock has no effect here, but naturally users may not click on paid content if they feel like it too much like an advertisement. The channel Linus Tech Tips have a few videos on this, and its a fairly common topic on their wan show.