I held out on blocking ads for some time, until it became impractical to avoid drive-by attacks other ways and the amount of stalking involved got _really_ creepy.
If sponsor segments irritate me enough that I'd consider sponsorblock then I choose between paying for the content directly (if a sponsor-free version is available that way) or just not consuming it (at least not from that source).
I’m guessing that sponsors probably look at click through or view count. I believe sponsors that care about views will ask to see this chart in the future if they don’t ask for it now.
They get paid just for talking about the products, what's the difference if I skip the segment manually, or if a plugin does it automatically?
For me as a european, quite a lot of physical items which are being sponsored are not available in my country, so the ads for these are essentially useless.
The rest of the ads are VPNs(which I already got), various SaaS which I have absolutely no use for or things I already know (and don't want).
Online ads are already annoying and useless to me, but sponsored segments are even worse.
At least I don't feel bad for skipping these segments because AFAIK, creators just have to integrate these segments into the videos, that's it. The advertisers can't know if I've seen the segment so the creator gets paid the same, doesn't matter if I watch or skip it.
However, I do not believe that blocking ads is taking money from providers. I think if your business model involves displaying ads, you must factor in the cases where consumers are not interested in said ads. Otherwise where do we draw the line? What if the consumer is letting the ad shows but not watching it? Will we mandate eye tracking? What if the consumer is mentally tuned out? Will we mandate brain implants? What if the consumer takes a principled stance of never purchasing anything they see in an ad? Will we mandate consumers mandatorily convert a certain percentage of ads that are shown to them? It's gonna delve into absurdity and a consequential threat to human well being. I wish society could just reach a common ground that it's a fundamental right that people are allowed to block ads by whatever means they see fit.
On just that, yes.
But at least sponsor spots are just that, payment for advertising. They are not directly part of the global stalking networks. I don't object to advertising as a way of paying for things, I object to being followed around in everything I do.
Further, if I manually skip the ads, how is that functionally different to automatically skipping the ads? What if I turn off audio or avert my eyes? Are you arguing that I should have my eyes and ears glued to the screen when the ads are playing?
Long term if no one buys the sponsorships will fall off.
> I'll never buy
Of course if you know with absolutely 100% certainty that you'll never buy or mention to others (you might not need/want a WidgitotronAsAService, but maybe someone you know asks about them later) anything ever mentioned in a sponsor spot, then no there is no loss (and I envy your clairvoyance).
I consider it a politeness to the content creators to not automatically skip the sponsor slots. I do manually ship the ones I've heard a few times already, but you never know if the next one might have some relevance. Unlike stalky ads, the sponsor slots have some chance of being relevant to what I'm thinking about while watching that particular clip.