If you are watching for free, and you're that annoyed by ads, then maybe you just feel entitled.

If the the content is there, I'll watch it; if it's not, I won't. I certainly don't feel entitled to it.

If anything, the sense of entitlement seems to be emanating firmly from the people who upload the videos: they seem to think that because they upload videos, they are entitled to make money from them. Sorry, no.

When I follow a YouRuber (I'm borrowing that typo, I like it) and have seen them descend into the paid/promotional arena, I have been turned off and stopped subscribing to their channel.

Advertising tends to naturally weed out, for me, the ones who are not as passionate about what they do. Sorry if this model is counter to YT's business model.

Better: if you want to make a business out of it, sell plans like WoodenGears guy, or kits like Ben Eater.

> Advertising tends to naturally weed out, for me, the ones who are not as passionate about what they do.

This is a remark I see over and over again, basically "You're only in it for the money" once you do sponsors. Here's the thing that no one really gets, Youtube is not a hobby. I don't care what the channel topic is, building cars, lathe projects, tech reviews, pets, etc. The hobby for the creator is the subject, not the video production platform or process. Youtube is not social media, we're not posting videos so our friends can see what we're up to. The entire system is built completely differently from something like facebook, twitter, instgram, etc. It requires actual work. Planning videos, making thumbnails, responding to comments from strangers, making business connections, and more when you get larger. "Making videos" themselves isn't just waving a camera around while you do something either and requires it's own thought and effort.

Anyone who has reasonable success on Youtube can be monetarily rewarded for that. That alone creates an expectation that it could possibly be a source of income from the outset. If you can achieve making it a sustainable income source capable of being lived off of, why wouldn't you? You can continue to do and build upon your actual hobby, whatever it is. But instead of working a different "conventional" job you do video production, PR, marketing, and potentially advertising. The problem is that the on platform advertisement revenue is not enough to cover the effort and resources required to make videos as you become more serious about it. Part of this is on viewers because Youtube knows if you are using adblock. I can see this on the back end, on average for my channel less than 50% of views are monetized. So if nobody used adblock I could make literally double the amount on just the on platform ads alone. But that's not how it is and it's not going to change.

So you have to do something else as well. Personally, as a Youtuber, I see two revenue paths. You either go crowd funded with something like Patreon or do sponsors. You can do both but unless it's well done and relevant it feels like double dipping to me. But the in video sponsors aren't any different than the other advertisements on platform on youtube, except they aren't blocked by adblock. (Youtubers properly disclosing the ads is a completely separate issue that should not besmirch everyone who does it.) Youtubers don't get to choose their sponsor partners unless they are gigantic and have to take what they can get. We get tons of spam offers that try to screw us, taking real ones from even slightly reputable companies can make a big impact. Youtubers should do a better job of picking them, but not everybody understands something like what a VPN actually is and how is just moves your endpoint to a different set of private hands. But advertising is tied to media and not new at all. Complaining about a slightly more effective version of it is just naivety about how the service works and what the people who make the videos do.

TL;DR: Youtube is not a hobby, the subject Youtubers talk about is. Youtube is a job that takes real work, but it can't pay well enough, partly because of adblock. In video sponsors are just a different ad method that directly pays bypassing the adblock problem.

PS: I do not use adblock, partly because it feels hypocritical to make money on ads and then block them for others. The internet is indeed annoying without it, but I manage just fine.

Speak for yourself. I post videos on Youtube to show some low hundreds of people (including friends) that are subscribed to me what I'm up to, to give them a good laugh or to share some music, art or software I've made. No one owes it to me to elevate this hobby into a job. There are many Youtube channels like this.

Maybe if I had a million subscribers the urge to attract people with youtube-faced thumbnails and to monetize through shitty mobile game sponsorships would be overwhelming but I'd like to believe that I wouldn't be pissed off if people opted to mechanically skip the latter.

> So if nobody used adblock I could make literally double the amount on just the on platform ads alone.

If people didn't have access to clean water on tap, I could make more money selling bottled water.

Plenty of musicians, artists perform/create with no prospect of monetary gain. They do it for the accolades. They do it for the positive feedback. They do it because they have to: they're artists.

I suspect YouTubers like "Applied Science" are artists of a sort. I guess I'm drawn to YouTube artists.

Applied Science is a good example of someone who has not gone the sponsor route. He is crowd funded and has a Patreon page that is setup to charge when he releases a video(I'm a patron of his actually). It is still work to make the videos and describe what he's doing and how it works. He could be sponsored, even relevantly, if for example he used a Rigol scope to show something and then talked about it for a bit. But that wouldn't mean he is any less passionate about what he is doing.

The musicians and artists example is different though. Their hobbies produce media as an end result. Publishing it is part of the process. I make videos about vintage computers. My hobby without youtube would just be me sitting alone in a room tinkering. Creating a video out of whatever I'm doing requires deliberate additional effort.

Gessoing a canvas is work. Setting up, taking down a drum kit is work too. If you want the world to see your hobby, or your art, there is a cost involved. We accept that cost for exposure in return: for the joy of sharing in return.

I don't fault anyone wanting to make money from their hobby or their art. But I also respect a little more perhaps those, like Applied Science, that don't want to ... sully their art with a blatant sponsor plug.

Again though, I'm just a viewer, fan, enthusiast, lurker — the content creators get to make their own rules, I don't get to tell them how to run their channel.

Subscribed to your YT channel, BTW. Wrote a very early game on the Commodore PET, LOL.

Here's an example of one that is... nonsensical and perhaps a bit humorous (well, at least I liked it): https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0jPLRtEEjhU

> But sponsor segments... sometimes make me actually want to buy the product

That's exactly what I don't want: more sophisticated psychological manipulation that gets me to buy more stuff.

Then don't use the sponsor segment removal portion of the tool. Simple as that.

Those of us who don't want "clever" advertising any more than "annoying" advertising can use it. And that's that.

Yes this is why we dislike them (other than time wasting)

I don't want to be manipulated into buying crap, I'm good enough doing that myself

We DO NOT want to look at ads. If their solution is ads, we'll block them. When are they gonna understand this?

0: https://www.tubics.com/blog/what-counts-as-a-view-on-youtube....

1: https://i.judge.sh/rare/Cherry/chrome_H0p9bAoLgy.png the red line is how far in i've watched.

Though, YouTube seems to do some aggressive deduping here, if I download from 5 different IPs, excluding the IP I'm logged into YouTube's services, I see 5 views. If I download 50 times from one IP, I see one view.

There is no need to state the obvious. Nobody would miss any kind of advertisement in the media they consume but that doesn't answer how content creators are supposed to be compensated for the effort they put in.