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.

>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.

I don't think I've ever purchased a product that I have seen advertised by a creator on YT that I hadn't already purchased before seeing it in a sponsored ad. That last bit I added because I used to use ExpressVPN and now I'm seeing some sponsored ads for it.

The deal has been made between the creator and the company already, it's been added to their video, so there should not need to be any noticeable affect from running sponsor block for people like myself who don't jump to buy advertised products when seeing them advertised by a creator I follow. Unless there is some kind of feedback that YT is giving the companies about who is viewing their sponsored ads, I guess, but I doubt that's happening. So my use of sponsor block (which I don't actually use - the right arrow button exists) shouldn't have any affect on sponsor finances that I can see.

I'm not against creators making money, but I don't want to see ads in videos placed by YT and I don't want to see them in videos by creators, but I understand they would like to make some money. I've given through Patreon to some creators, but I'm not going to do that for all of the dozens of creators I follow. If I could just press a button and tip a small amount to the creator when watching a video I really liked, using a payment method I've already set up, I'd start doing that in a heartbeat. But I don't know if such an animal exists.