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.

> blunt instrument like this is likely to kill off sponsorships as a whole

That's the dream. Ads are a poison and a blight.

Removing them is something many users, including me welcome. If one wants money for their videos, they're welcome to actually allow getting payments i.e. patreon, the "Youtube sponsorship"-thing.

I wouldn't pay real money other than my YT Premium, so I'm fine with sponsor reads. I'm not alone.

As I understand it YouTube Premium viewers result in significantly more revenue than ad based viewers do [1] but represent a tiny fraction of viewers [2] and can't be targeted separately. I.e. if most people were willing to pay in just one way, even if that were just YouTube Premium, then there wouldn't be such a strong incentive for channels to rely on sponsored segments but most people prefer not paying anything and dealing with ads and/or sponsored segments instead leaving those that do a bit stuck with the latter.

[1] Just one example https://www.reddit.com/r/youtubegaming/comments/p1qmgu/conte... [2] https://backlinko.com/youtube-users

I would buy premium in a heartbeat if it actually filtered out all ads and sponsored content. Not just the segment, the entire video should be cut if its creation was influenced by “impressions” or what ever filler content is measured in.

The current deal gives me no value, it just distributes more money to promote quantity crap over quality.

Someone needs to figures out how to take my money and distribute them to people working on actually valuable stuff.

>Someone needs to figures out how to take my money and distribute them to people working on actually valuable stuff.

why do you need a financial advisor to donate to Patreon or even Youtube memberships now? The models are about as easy to (un)subscribe from as you can get, while allowing granular control.

Do you really want some "index fund" where you trust someone else to use your money to fund "good creators"? That sounds like a capitalist's wet dreams. And a consumer hellscape.