YouTube tests server-side ads to make your coveted blocker obsolete
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YouTube has been spotted testing server-side ads, which could pose a problem to ad blockers.
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They are still a metric they can peddle to their advertisers to show "how many people see this ad in a month."
You don't think they know how many watch their videos with adblockers or third party clients?
I highly doubt they accept views from third party clients as valid ad views or probably views at all since that would likely make abuse easier.
It still goes to active user counts though. There will still be a footprint left by any view and that can be marketed as "we have X million users daily!"
I doubt the really big advertisers (the only ones that maybe can negotiate) think that's enough statistics.
Again, the point is that those accounts are still users that can be pointed out as such for all to see. Remember: a youtube account is just a Google account.
One could argue that youtube is a highly effective loss leader - people get into the Google ecosystem because of making an account to subscribe to their favorite content creators. Now Google has data they can sell, and metrics for advertisers to go "I see 18-30 year old white guys who watch things about X are likely to respond positively to things about Y." The algorithm, even without advertisements, is constantly building a profile of every user.
I don't use third party clients but I thought that the entire point of them was that you don't use an account.
There is still a footprint of "person is watching X, then they go to Y" with or without an account by my understanding.
Its less valuable data, sure, but it all feeds thr algorithm
Maybe, it would depend on how the front ends work with how they get content and so on.
Either way I doubt they care much about that data. I would bet they would bet they would rather get rid of those users.
The effort/cost expended to go after a tiny group of people vs the amount of money generated/saved from stopping them was (and probably still is) not worth it. There just aren't that many people who use 3rd party services without accounts.