YouTube's latest idea: server-side ad injection

[madires]

From SponsorBlock (https://fosstodon.org/@sponsorblock/112603139898164385):

YouTube is currently experimenting with server-side ad injection. This means that the ad is being added directly into the video stream.

Some reddit users confirmed that: https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/1de9kv5/youtube_is_currently_experimenting_with/

[pqass]

They may take our attention, but they'll never take our mute button!  And hopefully the FF still works.

[NiHaoMike]

They may take our attention, but they'll never take our mute button!  And hopefully the FF still works.

Anything they do to handle ads differently from content can be used against them. That includes disabling seeking, we'll just have that trigger an automatic mute and blank.

Also, unless there would be the exact same ads at the exact same times per video, wouldn't it be possible to download it multiple times and just reject what differs? (It would also generate multiple ad "views" which would make things interesting...)

[Faranight]

If they add ads directly into the video, then how are they going to serve videos without ads to paying subscribers?
And if they keep some videos without ads for this purpose, how are they going to prevent non-subs from using addons that redirect the videos from ones with ads to ad-less?

[Halcyon]

Hmmm. I hope this doesn't cause issues for those of us who download Youtube videos to watch locally.

[SiliconWizard]

That sounds nice. 

[shapirus]

Hmmm. I hope this doesn't cause issues for those of us who download Youtube videos to watch locally.

isn't that a criminal offense already?

[Halcyon]

Hmmm. I hope this doesn't cause issues for those of us who download Youtube videos to watch locally.

isn't that a criminal offense already?

Not in Australia.

[PlainName]

If they add ads directly into the video, then how are they going to serve videos without ads to paying subscribers?
And if they keep some videos without ads for this purpose, how are they going to prevent non-subs from using addons that redirect the videos from ones with ads to ad-less?

Simples: same raw video and they know the user connected, so if that user is targeted for ads they periodically interrupt the stream and fill with the ad stream, then carry on. No need for more than one version of the video.

Same technology, I'd imagine, that lets them insert personalised adverts - not all users see the same ad in a video. And not all users see adverts now anyway - I bet they don't have a zillion different versions of a video in storage, just the one that everyone sees.

[shapirus]

Hmmm. I hope this doesn't cause issues for those of us who download Youtube videos to watch locally.

isn't that a criminal offense already?

Not in Australia.

That was a joke that I hope remains only a joke.

[hans]

Hmmm. I hope this doesn't cause issues for those of us who download Youtube videos to watch locally.

isn't that a criminal offense already?

Criminal offense, no.

Civil lawsuit, yes, probably, especially if you agreed to their terms of service.

Criminal offense or 'legal action' is propaganda many media companies use to put people off piracy and whatnot. But in reality, it's a civil law case at best (happens more in Germany). Most of the times they can't do much other than block your IP and send messages please not to do it again.
Don't forget that for YT/Google, every user is a breathing data node ready to be mined, so the worst they can do is get people completely off their (advertising) platforms/reach.

There are only a few cases where piracy is really illegal by criminal law, that can put you in jail. Think software piracy, computer crime, etc.

[NiHaoMike]

Simples: same raw video and they know the user connected, so if that user is targeted for ads they periodically interrupt the stream and fill with the ad stream, then carry on. No need for more than one version of the video.

Same technology, I'd imagine, that lets them insert personalised adverts - not all users see the same ad in a video. And not all users see adverts now anyway - I bet they don't have a zillion different versions of a video in storage, just the one that everyone sees.

That would be easy to defeat with multiple downloads and comparing them. Only way to break that would be for each video to have the same ads at the same times for all users, but then that will allow Sponsorblock to work on injected ads.

[tszaboo]

Hmmm. I hope this doesn't cause issues for those of us who download Youtube videos to watch locally.

isn't that a criminal offense already?

Maybe a Kangaroo court in New York can convict us a felon as well.
For smart TVs this would actually be great if they do it. It hangs up switching video streams so often, with bad software.
But YT started "offering" me 50 second long unskippable ads. Endless enshittification.

[PlainName]

That would be easy to defeat with multiple downloads and comparing them.

Yes. So?

Nothing is 100% perfect and I doubt if Google expect to catch every last viewer. They just need to make it not worthwhile for those users that would be put off - the hardcore that will jump through any hope to circumvent it probably aren't on their radar (unless they automate it for those that would otherwise succumb).

But, since you mention it, how difficult would it be to check that the destination of two (or more) streams is the same place and just send the same thing, if it got to be a problem? OK, so maybe you download one stream today and another tomorrow, and now you don't have real-time viewing and, instead, a storage issue. Plus it would be trivial to ensure that every stream is unique, even with the very same video. So now the user is using a special tool to compare rendered output rather that stream data, and a bit later the videos will not just be unique in data but will display slightly differently. Now the user had another tool that compares rendered output but allows for a certain level of difference...

I think you may need to rethink 'easy' and compare it with 'worthwhile'

[tooki]

If they add ads directly into the video, then how are they going to serve videos without ads to paying subscribers?
And if they keep some videos without ads for this purpose, how are they going to prevent non-subs from using addons that redirect the videos from ones with ads to ad-less?

Streaming them with ads doesn’t mean storing them with ads on the server. Nobody has said that the ads will be baked into the video itself, which they wouldn’t want because that’d mean the ads never change.

Think of it like this: YouTube ads so far have basically been multiple video streams (the video, plus one for each ad), with one ad stream shown at a time with the video paused. The new way is more like cable TV, where it’s one stream.

As for access control: surely you don’t believe that a URL is all that stands between subscription content and non-subscribers?!? Like, c’mon… surely you’ve seen newspaper websites that block an article page if you’re not subscribed. Nothing in the URL changes.

[PwrElectronics]

Some utube creators I watch now smoothy segue into a sponsored ad in the middle.  At least with these its usually possible to move the slider past the ad to skip most of it.

[Marco]

If they add ads directly into the video, then how are they going to serve videos without ads to paying subscribers?

Bigger issue is how to change the ads.

Presumably it's a lossless transcode, they just add extra GOPs. Trivial to do on the fly.

[NiHaoMike]

But, since you mention it, how difficult would it be to check that the destination of two (or more) streams is the same place and just send the same thing, if it got to be a problem?

Surprisingly hard if you take advantage of VPNs or proxies. Or multiple users can collaborate on that problem. (See below for how that could be done without sending full resolution videos between users.)

Plus it would be trivial to ensure that every stream is unique, even with the very same video. So now the user is using a special tool to compare rendered output rather that stream data, and a bit later the videos will not just be unique in data but will display slightly differently. Now the user had another tool that compares rendered output but allows for a certain level of difference...

There are "fingerprinting" algorithms that can assign values to an image such that images that look nearly identical would have very close values, for easy comparison. A simple one would be to downscale each frame to something small like 240x135 (that's 1/8 of 1080p) and crush the bit depth to something like 5 bits per color. Good luck defeating that without introducing very obvious visual artifacts. But that's unlikely to be implemented in the first place, it would be quite costly to encode a new stream every time.

It's also worth mentioning that MythTV implemented video ad detection like 2 decades ago, with a level of computing power less than a modern Raspberry Pi.

[SiliconWizard]

As a corollary, will this further prevent third-party players to play YT videos, instead of having to use their browser player only?

VLC used to work well for this, apparently it doesn't anymore already. Have been unable to play (stream) YT videos with VLC for a couple months. It did work fine before that.
There are other players that still work, but for how long.

[John B]

Hopefully the ad is an individual chunk in the stream, then something like yt-dlp could be the best way to grab a local copy. Even if there needs to be a manual identification of the chunk which the user can discard.

[amyk]

Broadcast TV ads were always "in the stream", and VCRs several decades ago could automatically detect and pause recording during them (I think it was a heuristic based on the audio and video levels), so this is just going back to that model - only with more computing power to detect the boundaries.

VLC used to work well for this, apparently it doesn't anymore already. Have been unable to play (stream) YT videos with VLC for a couple months. It did work fine before that.

VLC still works for me.

[themadhippy]

Broadcast TV ads were always "in the stream", and VCRs several decades ago could automatically detect and pause recording during them (I think it was a heuristic based on the audio and video levels),

thought they worked by the cue dot. the black+ white square that you used to see top right of the screen just before the ad break.

[Halcyon]

...enshittification.

A word I'm going to start using far more often.

 

Broadcast TV ads were always "in the stream", and VCRs several decades ago could automatically detect and pause recording during them (I think it was a heuristic based on the audio and video levels),

thought they worked by the cue dot. the black+ white square that you used to see top right of the screen just before the ad break.

That's only in the UK to my knowledge. Definitely not a thing in most parts of the world. I think some (most?) VCR's worked by detecting the brief fade-to-black between the main program and the first commercial. Then each commercial is typically played back-to-back with no (or very few) black frames in between, then fading back to black before the main program begins again.

You can see an example of this at the 12:06 mark in this video: https://youtu.be/hFHYX96eZhU?feature=shared&t=726

[tggzzz]

...enshittification.

A word I'm going to start using far more often.

 

There's a reason that was voted "word of the year" https://americandialect.org/2023-word-of-the-year-is-enshittification/

https://www.ft.com/content/6fb1602d-a08b-4a8c-bac0-047b7d64aba5 amazingly not paywalled!

[Halcyon]

I'm hearing reports that many users of Android-based TV's and various other devices are having a horrible experience. Not sure if this is tied to this garbage YouTube is trying, with injecting ads into video streams, but it's causing video to lock up while the audio keeps going.

Brilliant.