This.

As a positive example, I like how many YouTube channels take 30 seconds out of a 10 minute video to talk about some company's product that might be of interest to their audience.

Not an annoying video ad that has nothing to do with what I'm reading / watching, just the host talking about a product or service that their audience has a chance to be interested in.

This is the only type of internet ad that has ever worked on me. They read-out a promo code unique to their channel that gave me a 10% off discount upon purchase. Not just that, but the channel got a kick-back for promoting relevant content, and the advertiser got data telling it exactly how effective money-spent on this channel was by virtue of the promo code.

No tracking of my habits was required, and all parties involved probably got detailed-enough feedback as to their campaign's effectiveness.

I completely agree. I cannot stand some random YouTube ad that YouTube itself plays before videos because it's not relevant and I do not trust the people that are marketing it.

When I see someone I trust on YouTube recommend a product in a pre-roll ad or the like, then I don't really skip it and I do really keep those companies in mind in case I ever am looking for a product that they might offer.

If-and-only-if the sponsorship or product recommendation is properly disclosed as a paid promotion[1], this is a great way to handle product promotion.

> trust

This is the key feature. The advertiser risks trusting that the promoter will show their product in a positive light. The promoter risks their own reputation on the quality of their endorsements.

This element of risk hopefully serves as an incentive to maintain a high quality of both the product and the endorsement. Bad manufacturers and poor quality (or scandalous) services should lose access to trustworthy endorsers with (hopefully) large audiences. Good manufacturers and high quality services won't want to associate with cheap shills.

The only problem I see is that places like YouTube are not optimizing for quality endorsers. Their focus on engagement is driving away people that try to create quality; may have already left. Those that remain are becoming increasingly formulaic, uninspired, risk-adverse, and "advertiser safe".

[1] Which is required by law![2] This probably also means disclosing if you got a free copy for review purposes[3] of a product that would otherwise cost money or have a non-monetary value. The disclosure must also be "clear and conspicuous"[4].

[2] https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2017/04/ftc-s...

[3] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/ftc...

[4] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/ftc...

> I like how many YouTube channels take 30 seconds out of a 10 minute video to talk about some company's product that might be of interest to their audience.

I like how many podcasts have ads with predictable lengths, so I can skip them with the "fast forward" button without hearing them. NPR is 4 skips; Slate is 8-10. It seems like "deep learning" should have figured this out by now.

TV scene pirates use machine learning to automatically cut advertisement breaks from ripped shows before they get uploaded.

The newest version of Plex DVR software can cut commercials out of your recorded video too

Only because they’re using comskip. Don’t give Plex credit for simply setting a post process script. It’s also not very reliable as you need to tweak the settings per channel/show and so on.

I only disagree with:

> make it indistinguishable from content

I kind of hate the idea of having marketing-planted material appearing indistinguishable from real content. Most of that is the general distrust I have towards large organizations in general.

That said, one could argue that all content is "marketing-planted" even when it's not an ad. There's always an agenda or at least bias. That's a fair point. Carry on good sir.

I couldn't agree with you more. I worded that horribly. I concede to your point in spite of you being so gracious about it.

People already pay journalists to mention products or write reviews, Facebook runs ads in the feed that at a glance look like regular posts, and internet commenters (colloquially called shills) get paid to promote views or companies.

They're all creepy and they're all unwelcome.

They already do this if possible. The VAST majority of publishers are selling only a small percentage of their own ad space (the giants of the industry might be different, but even they probably have third party networks to fill gaps in their inventory). Instead, they partner with networks who auction ads off to the highest bidder. That bidder is usually going to be a company who trusts the ad network to track users and show ads relevant to either the interests they've shown or the current content.

I work with a publisher on these sorts of things (I am not an ad network, though). Some of those networks have strict prohibitions against showing ads on pages featuring certain types of content, and so we've had to build our own system to display ads on those pages which work with networks which are fine with that content. The publisher does sell its own ad spaces to interested local parties, but these are usually accompanied by periodical ad sales because the company ultimately makes more money selling ads through networks.

In theory this is a good idea but in practice it leads to thousands of low quality "top ten things you need when going camping" style websites only created to sell things.

I'm under the impression those thousands of low quality ad infested click-baiting websites already exist.

That's what adwords tries to do. There's a substantial premium on relevance.

> [...] serve ads from the content web server and make it indistinguishable from content

This sounds like an argument for sponsored content. At least with the current ad strategy, it can be relatively easy for a user distinguish ads from content. How do we distinguish a YouTube video that ends with the statement "this video was brought to you by [sponsor not relevant to the content]" and a YouTube version of an infomercial?

Carbon Ads are a good bet. Downside being the network is invite only.

You can beg an invite which is what I did. So long as your site is in their target markets they are likely to let you in.

You mean like HQ trivia's sponsored questions?

It's not crazy idea, they could serve it using the subdomain but serve themselves, but they are either too lazy or incompetent.

bonus points for applying machine learning to match the content to the ad