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.

Make your sponsored segments worth watching.

I watch a bunch of travel vlog channels and for the most part they advertise the same things (If I ever see another athletic greens sponsor segment or a four sigmatic ad I will scream -- I even actually LIKE four sigmatic products) but I have several channels whitelisted in SponsorBlock because the ads they do are hilarious.

https://www.youtube.com/user/kingingit365

Watch some of their videos and you will see what I mean. I was watching the channel for a year or more before watching a video while sponsorblock API was down (it's volunteer run so it happens sometimes) and realized I was missing out on a really hilarious and important part of their videos, instant whitelist!