YouTube's new ad strategy is bound to upset users - Hypertext
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Peak Points place adverts at the point where users are most engaged in a YouTube video.

This week YouTube hosted Brandcast 2025 in which it revealed how marketers could make better use of the platform to connect with customers.

A few new so-called innovations were announced at the event but one has caught the attention of the internet – Peak Points. This new product makes use of Gemini to detect “the most meaningful, or ‘peak’, moments within YouTube’s popular content to place your brand where audiences are the most engaged”.

Essentially, YouTube will use Gemini and probably the heatmap generated on YouTube videos by people skipping to popular points, to determine where to place advertising. Anybody who has grown up watching terrestrial television where adverts arrive as a way to build suspense will understand how annoying Peak Points could become.

  • dustyData@lemmy.worldEnglish
    51·
    15 hours ago

    YouTube was almost bankrupted because the cost of storage, servers and bandwidth greatly overran the ad revenue. Every idiot with 2 subscribers uploading dozens of hours of content cost them a ton of money. It is easy to underestimate how expensive video streaming infrastructure is.

    • MudMan@fedia.io
      5·
      15 hours ago

      Oh, it’s extraordinarily expensive, and what people really underestimate is how HUGE Google’s storage requirements actually are.

      Thing is, it’s also a ton of money. Youtube isn’t just ad-driven video streaming, it’s also a Spotify competitor, a Twitch competitor, a video subscription service (and for some reason they still have a movie and show rental thing in there). 10% of all of Alphabet’s money is a LOT of money, and this isn’t the only business of theirs that demands insane storage requirements.

      I’m sure they’ll tighten requirements eventually, and they’ve already done a ton of throttling, but they, again, own Internet video.

      Let me put it this way, I think if Google decided to offer Youtube to either of us for a dollar on the condition we can’t resell it to anybody and we have to keep running it forever we’d both still take it.

      • Ledericas@lemm.eeEnglish
        1·
        4 hours ago

        its also why they allow more right wing content on the site too, conservatives love outrage and youtube provides now

      • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        1·
        7 hours ago

        Let me put it this way, I think if Google decided to offer Youtube to either of us for a dollar on the condition we can’t resell it to anybody and we have to keep running it forever we’d both still take it.

        I’m not sure about that. what would I do? manipulate elections? manipulate public opinion? I’m not an advertising company to be able to do that