The question for advertisers --- is this really more cost effective than a simple, non-personalized, context based approach?
There is evidence that advertisers are increasingly deciding it is not. For example --- Amazon's context based ads are one of it's fastest growing areas.
https://www.businessinsider.com/inside-amazons-growing-ad-bu...
While YT staff may not actually hold these extremist views themselves, my guess would be they're nevertheless actively pushing it for commercial reasons. Just like it turned out that the supposedly liberal pre-Elon old guard of Twitter had special protections in place that made accounts such as LibsOfTikTok immune to getting banned, I am quite certain Youtube has the same protections for extremist channels that would otherwise run afoul of its T&C on the daily.
The slickest and most subversive form of advertising is that which isn't immediately recognized as such.
Yes. This is exactly how personalized advertising works.
Advertisers pay to target specific groups/cohorts in a statistical manner. Sorry that you don't like your cohort but this is a well known and unavoidable byproduct of their statistical approach.
It's like when a friend has cancer. You search for it on Google and the next thing you know, you're bombarded with ads for quack remedys.
The only effective solution --- avoid those who play this game.
Advertising doesn't have to work this way. There are alternatives --- such as basing it strictly on expressed interest. If you search for cancer, you should expect some ads related to cancer. What you shouldn't expect is these ads tracking you all over the internet.
Advertising works but there is not much independent evidence to show that personalized advertising is really any more cost effective.