Yeah, what the hell is up with that? Ads that ultimately don't resemble the game whatsoever? It's blatant false advertising; shouldn't that be illegal or something?
Youtube in a nutshell
- Thread starter Samtemdo8
- Start date
For you and @Godzillarich(aka tf2godz)
Part of all that is youtube's I think it's "Anti-radicalisation and political division" ideas at work. Basically it will recommend you youtubers deemed to have different views to the main ones you watch or the main ones who have the same audiences you're part of to try and expose you to new idea. I had it years ago when it recommend "How the World Works" when that channel was still active which was a very very republican channel that I disagreed with everything they said and still do but I don't think it was an actively bad channel, how it was run and done was pretty much "This is my view on things take it or leave it".
The best implementation of sponsored ads I think was The Amazing Atheist who created a character called Uncle Sergei a sort of dodgey Russian gangster type character to do the sponsored stuff because it came off as a sort of wink wink nudge nudge we all know this stuff is a bit crap but they're letting me get away with this, Or Internet Historian whose VPN adverts have started to turn into an epic animated action series where Nord tries to escape the evil companies trying to steal his data.
It's tough to say much about the algorithm other than it's suspected even youtube staff working on it don't know how it all actually works.
Jesse Cox once pointed out he was told or found out that there's a consistency thing to it. So Mark Rober who does 1 video a month as long as he releases that video with most of the same tags on roughly the same day each month he gets a boost. Or people who do serialised lets plays if they release the lets play parts the same day each week they get rewarded by the algorithm.
As for video length it's only part of it as % watchtime plays a big role now too. No youtuber should be really super stretching stuff now as the limit before you can apply a midroll is now 8 minutes not even the 10 it used to be.
Part of my issue is the idea (though this isn't confirmed) that having the auto placed / midroll ads actually boosts visibility. Which I kinda hate because I'd much rather some youtuber figure out their ad placement well (See Red Letter Media who often leave a short like 3 second blank spot to slot ads into their video) rather than the auto ad placement stuff that will chuck them in about every 5 minutes or so often half way through a person talking.
I think that so long as you put some tiny disclaimer up somewhere on the screen, you can get away with it.
What I'm wondering about these days is ads for games that do show the gameplay, where the gameplay is utterly atrocious.
One day I'm going to learn to just stay in my little bubble of obscure 80's metal and post punk channels....
I find it kind of funny (funny sad, not funny ha-ha) how people say they want to support their favorite creators- and then they get downright furious when there are ads or sponsor spots or a Patreon link. I think that people want creators to stay poor, to not make any money off of what they do, so that the audience can maintain this delusion where the creator is working a second job of creating content just out of the goodness of their heart, keeping the content "pure".
No people would just prefer youtube paid them decently from regular ads such that sponsors were as big a requirement for them, because in the past sponsored really weren't that needed and it's not just youtubers after money. I think it was Vito who said something like "My latest video would have earned me $10 in ad revenue, putting the sponsored thing in meant it earned me $500 and sorry but $10 for a week spend on a video is not sustainable so I have to put in sponsors unless youtube decides to start paying out ad revenue like it used to"
I've seen some good sponsored stuff done but I also think people are getting fed up of the often fairly stock lackluster ad reads for VPN companies, Raid Shadow Legends and other mobile game and Raycon headphones. I mean at least Manscaped shave your hairy grapes stuff was pretty funny stuff by all those who did those reads. Hoestly I'd much prefer they just actually put in a pre-made ad to most ad reads though just "Here's a trailer for this game / film" rather than "I'm going to pretend to like this product"
Sometimes I wish Youtube let you watch a video at faster than 2X speed.