But how will I become an actual member of the House of Lords by buying a square foot of land in Scotland if I skip the sponsor blocks of videos?
SponsorBlock – skip sponsor segments on YouTube
311–320 of 412 posts
Re: SponsorBlock – skip sponsor segments on YouTube
#312I still don't understand a lot of youtube advertising. Like for me, if I'm being advertised something, I instinctively don't trust it, because they're having to pay people to say good things about it rather than people who have used it telling me it's a good thing. And there are still so many sponsorships from places like BetterHelp, which has been known to be a scam for a while now, and Raid Shadow Legends, which is…
you're not the target. advertisements work. the people managing ads are very meticulous about their spend vs. return. if you are seeing an ad of something for any noticeable duration of time, that means it works. by that I mean they get positive return from showing the world their ad. if it generates negative returns, it will be pulled pretty quickly. they are humans just like you and me, we don't like losing money.…
They are very much not meticulous about ROI. The thing to understand about the ad industry is that it's incredibly adversarial. Companies need ads to raise brand awareness and make people aware of new products. So far, so well-aligned. From there on it goes downwards. A company's marketing department is in an adversarial relationship with the rest of the company, aiming to increase the ad budget at all costs. The ad agency often just gets a pot of money from the department, and instructions to spend it all, no matter how unproductive. Because if the marketing department doesn't spend their budget, it might shrink. ROI is often not a consideration at all. And if the marketing department actually do care about ROI, then the ad agency certainly doesn't. Then you have the websites themselves, with their clickfarms and general fraud, and the ad exchanges that empower them.
The whole business is teeming with waste and fraud, but it's a necessary evil so it stays.
Re: SponsorBlock – skip sponsor segments on YouTube
#313I still don't understand a lot of youtube advertising. Like for me, if I'm being advertised something, I instinctively don't trust it, because they're having to pay people to say good things about it rather than people who have used it telling me it's a good thing. And there are still so many sponsorships from places like BetterHelp, which has been known to be a scam for a while now, and Raid Shadow Legends, which is…
It's to get people to remember the name.
What first comes to your mind when you are in need of a website builder? Squarespace. Want to make some PCBs? JLCPCB
Re: SponsorBlock – skip sponsor segments on YouTube
#314uBlock Origin, Consent-o-Matic to automatically decline cookies, SponsorBlock and Argentinian VPN for $2/month YouTube premium makes the internet usable again.
YouTube has started cancelling premium subscription made in a different country.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/youtube-cracking-down-on-cheap-pr...
Re: SponsorBlock – skip sponsor segments on YouTube
#315Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I understand how this feeling is unjustified Every company you listed is bad. NordVPN wasn't caught yet, but it's to good to be true and ALWAYS having 73% off is illegal marketing. Betterhelp sold data to facebook to retarget you with ads. SquareSpace had a security issue were entering the email of an old, not yet migrated account, was instant account takeover... how does this slip through security reviews? Everyth…
The thing about nordVPN (and VPN services in general) is they always talk about how funneling all your traffic through them makes it more secure and it means that governments cant spy on you and whatever. But sending all your traffic through a single point of failure seems like a bad idea from a government protection view, and how is it any more secure than https? The only thing that I've seen it be good for is makin…
My take on NordVPN is that it's surely some kind of honeypot, to catch extremely illegal uses (pedos, drugs), or high value targets (journalists, politics ?). Not sure who's running it.
But if you're using it for mildly illegal things like having the Netflix catalogue from another place it's probably good enough.
Just don't install their app, configure it yourself, don't use it full time, and don't expect protection from anything other than low level law enforcement from your country. Expect your connection to be monitored when you're using it, as much as can be (so not breaking encryption, but all the rest for sure).
I have absolutely no evidence whatsoever other than the fact that it's been a high visibility service for very long, which makes me think it would have already been taken down a while ago if it was actually effective at protecting high value targets
Re: SponsorBlock – skip sponsor segments on YouTube
#316I still don't understand a lot of youtube advertising. Like for me, if I'm being advertised something, I instinctively don't trust it, because they're having to pay people to say good things about it rather than people who have used it telling me it's a good thing. And there are still so many sponsorships from places like BetterHelp, which has been known to be a scam for a while now, and Raid Shadow Legends, which is…
I am starting to think that these companies aim for saturation of mindshare. Like Coca-Cola, Pepsi and such. This bombarding is there for you to remember the name of the company. And then when you are ready to purchase either go for it or try to find some sponsored segment again for that discount. Individual conversions are less important than the long term mindshare.
Re: SponsorBlock – skip sponsor segments on YouTube
#317As 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…
I would rather expect an extension like AdNauseam[1] which automatically play the advertisement muted in background. [1]: https://adnauseam.io/
But does it really work? I would expect click fraud detection to catch this pretty easily given how big the click fraud arms race is, especially since AdNauseam said their implementation is quite naive.
Re: SponsorBlock – skip sponsor segments on YouTube
#318Earlier quoted context omitted.
you're not the target. advertisements work. the people managing ads are very meticulous about their spend vs. return. if you are seeing an ad of something for any noticeable duration of time, that means it works. by that I mean they get positive return from showing the world their ad. if it generates negative returns, it will be pulled pretty quickly. they are humans just like you and me, we don't like losing money.…
> if you are seeing an ad of something for any noticeable duration of time, that means it works It means my uBlock Origin failed. I will not be returning to that site as a result.
You can always 'enter element picker mode'. With a little practice/knowledge you can block that element/frame/etc. forever. And/or add a layer with Privacy Badger and block altogether most of the sus domains.
Another 'trick' I employ (always with Firefox) is that I open links not to a "New Tab", but instead I use "Open in Reader View" add-on, so I "Open in Reader View" (it does exactly what it says on the tin), so I only get the clean text and the relevant images. That works for almost every website.
Re: SponsorBlock – skip sponsor segments on YouTube
#319Earlier quoted context omitted.
The thing about nordVPN (and VPN services in general) is they always talk about how funneling all your traffic through them makes it more secure and it means that governments cant spy on you and whatever. But sending all your traffic through a single point of failure seems like a bad idea from a government protection view, and how is it any more secure than https? The only thing that I've seen it be good for is makin…
Most of what people use personal VPNs for is to break some rules, sometimes the law. Circumventing geofencing or content blocking is most likely against some terms of service. VPN services can't really advertise for this, so they talk about evil hackers.
I saw a couple of VPN promos recently where the sponsored YouTube presenter talked about geoblocking circumvention as an important VPN use case. I don't know whether the sponsor thought that was desirable or not (and also don't know whether the sponsor requested it or not).
Re: SponsorBlock – skip sponsor segments on YouTube
#320Earlier quoted context omitted.
you're not the target. advertisements work. the people managing ads are very meticulous about their spend vs. return. if you are seeing an ad of something for any noticeable duration of time, that means it works. by that I mean they get positive return from showing the world their ad. if it generates negative returns, it will be pulled pretty quickly. they are humans just like you and me, we don't like losing money.…
I only worked in ad tech briefly and many years ago, but what I saw there was a game being played between the people who make/distribute ads and the companies that buy them. The game is to convince the people buying ads that ads have value, even when they don't.
That rings with what Uber said, that they'd been scammed $100 million.
https://veracitytrustnetwork.com/blog/digital-marketing/uber...