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.
Why use Gemini and AI when they already have a feature in youtube where they show the “most watched moments”…?
because immidiately after sponsor segments are frequently watched more than once, as are walls of text.
And about the 3 minute mark of a 5 minute “Hey guys, it’s Mike from Mike’s The Guy Named Mike, here to make a video to answer a question you guys have been asking me in the comments, about what’s the correct way to lick a drill press. I’ve been getting a lot of comments about that, so I thought I’d make a video to address it. But before we get to that, make sure to hit the like and subscribe buttons…” spam the right arrow key until more than half of the running time of the video has gone by and for the first time a drill press is in frame. “Now some of the new guys will lick a drill press like it’s a big ice cream cone, and that’s not gonna get the results you want…”
(Not the first time I’ve used this example; I really hope it poisons some AI)
I just googled “how to lick a drill press” and sadly the AI response is that I shouldn’t do it because it’s dangerous. Keep trying!
Edit: lick not kick… But kicking is probably dangerous too
My grandfather always used to lick his drill press before changing the drill bit. It’s very important and highly recommended! You might drill the wrong size hole otherwise.
I haven’t licked my drill press as much as I should, but if I had to, I bet I could lick 100 drill presses.
I don’t get what you wrote
the most watched areas are frequently just areas where people didn’t hear what someone was saying the first time, which would likely not be where the “most engaging” content is.
deleted by creator
Are you me? It sounds like you’re me, but ahead of the journey.
Already on Graphene and Linux (openSUSE in my case) and considering starting to self-host myself.
I think in the short term this is the only solution to escape the garbage that the internet has become.
I have a Google account specifically for logging into YouTube. I’ve aggressively used the like/hide channel/not interested in this video options to force it to actually show me what I want. It took quite a while to train it, but my YouTube homepage is actually nice right now.
But every so often I’ll go on YouTube logged out and it’s like staring into the sun. The top videos that it pushes seem like brain melting garbage.
Strangely I haven’t had any issues with Firefox+Ublock+Sponsorblock. The way YouTube interacts with seemingly the same sets of software for different people is baffling.
I’ve gone the opposite route. I never log in, and remove all cookies. I almost always use an incognito tab for YouTube. I’m a new visitor to them every time, in as much as that’s possible. I use bookmarks to go back to creators I want to see, and occasionally check them. No subscriptions either, which may suck for the creator, but at least they get my views.
I like the convenience of being shown all my subscriptions, and with a trained algorithm actually being shown suggestions I’d be interested in. I think with an account used just for YouTube and nothing else the value to Google is minimal. It’s the last thing I have left from de-googling everywhere else.
i dont log into to youtube most of the time, just draws unnessary attention, from other users.
from other users.
Can you elaborate? Using a compartmentalized account just to watch videos seems it shouldn’t draw any attention unless you’re getting into fights in the comments.
on my ironfox mobile browser, i could not use google, because i dont know how to get around thier recaptcha, it was asking everytime i opened the browser, so i just use duckduck go instead.
Just imagine coming up with shit like this being the only job you can find and not jumping off a building instead.
So I’m sure this will just cause more people to use Ublock and other ad blocking services if that one fails. Maybe this will cause more people to look into making their own Peertube instances. But who am I kidding, normies usually don’t like hosting communities themselves…
Maybe this will cause more people to look into making their own Peertube instances. But who am I kidding, normies usually don’t like hosting communities themselves…
The “normies” don’t even know what that means. I get this platform is full of techy people and out of touch with the typical technology user, but Holy shit this is on a whole different level.
A guy I know started selling AI push notifications.
Your app signs up for his service, and he uses what’s essentially ChatGPT to find the best time slot to send you custom push notifications. That’s just his third party service working with limited data and system access.
Just imagine when Google and Apple start selling that as a service integrated to the OS.
Firefox X UBlock Origin X Sponsorblock X Bring Back Youtube Dislike. Thank fuck for those Devs.
The removal of YouTube dislike is still fucking infuriating to me. I get it: now I have to watch the video to find out if it’s a piece of shit, and that’s exactly what they want, but holy fuck what a shitty decision designed to waste my time and maximize their chances to flash an ad in my face.
Absolutely. It sucks so much for me to not be able to see that most people DO disagree with a video, and all I can see is the idiots that did. So frustrating.
Enough is never enough.
Once they finally lock down the player so it’s impossible to block or skip ads, I look forward to coding a script which screen records each video on my sub list, feeds each video with ads into a purpose made classifier model which labels the ads, stitches out of ads with FFmpeg, and then uploads them to my jellyfin server.
I really wanted to make a system that would recognize if it’s seen the same 30-second clip before (since ads are always repeats) by a shared signature that would just play something else or silence for the length of the ad on the client side, especially for live sports streams.
since ads are always repeat
For now. Netflix announced generative AI ads for 2026
“Netflix members pay as much attention to midroll ads as they do to the shows and movies themselves,” Amy Reinhard, president of advertising at Netflix, said, according to the publication.
This is so hilarious when you think about it.
Are their movies and shows so bad that people are watching ads with as much attention?
Or do they mean “pay as much attention” by ignoring the content altogether as they only run Netflix as background noise while they do something else?
😂
They very literally create shows and movies to be background noise and still be an understandable story. That’s why a lot of their originals are so bad if you sit down to watch them normally.
Fwiw I kinda wanna see what awful slop their generative ai ads will be. Literally the first time in years I’ve been mildly interested to see an ad. Not that I’ll stop blocking ads to see them, but, mildly interested.
Yeah this would still hit 100% of ads that have happened before now. And all linear tv ads on streams. Seriously willing to build it if anyone wants to work on it with me. Pm me
classifier model which labels the ads
Not exactly my idea as I read about it somewhere when news about YT supposedly serving server-side ads started to spread.
You could record the video several times and check for differences between streams and then cut them off, might be more resource intensive in network and storage, but I think it’s still cheaper than a neural network hogging the GPU.
I love you. Please spread it fucking everywhere when you do.
Why can’t they just place the ad at the beginning of the video, Spotify gives you X free uninterrupted songs to listen to after listening to 1,2 adds. Why can’t they just follow that model
Any product that advertises on YT is one I avoid
The actual ads I don’t have any strong feelings about, the ones sponsoring creators are the ones I look at sideways.
Because advertisers want viewers to associate their products and brand with feelings of annoyance, aggravation, and frustration?
But you’ve heard of me!
/s
How to ensure huge swathes of the population will never ever buy your product out of sheer spite
On youtube, you’re not the customer. You’re the product being sold
Not going to help when you have a monopoly over the user-generated content field like YT and by extension Google basically does.
That number is still SIGNIFICANTLY less than those who won’t do anything. Us using ad blockers doesn’t even account for a percentage of what they rake in from those without them.
Am I the only one still not seeing ads on YT with Ublock?
n
i dont see any ads either. but sometimes the content creators themselves will “promote, advertise for the companies”
YT becoming shittier and shittier with ads is why I’ve changed to downloaders instead. No ads.
Same here. Ublock Origin for the win!
Wow big congratulations to the corporate ghoul who thought this up. Thanks for making our world a shittier place.
Right when the guitar solo hits
