this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2023
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The clever check is impossible. The server can't know the client is showing the video even when playing DRM content. I could literally mute the sound and put a black box over the ad until it's over. The problem is as old as the internet itself.
That's why Apple and Meta pushing eye tracking so hard. It's the only solution to the ad blocking problem.
I think YT is doing well with YT premium and that's the way to go for them. It's one of my favorite subscriptions and I'd probably stick around even if they raise the price unless they hurt the creators so badly they bounce and I'd bounce with them.
They also can't force you to look and listen to the current ads. So the "clever tracking" doesn't need to be better than the status quo. What it could avoid is completely skipping ads as if they are not there. The server could reject giving you further frames until the time the ad runs is over. If you suppressed the ad, you still had to sit it out. Which in turn means that it's (almost) futile for the user to do that. If I have to wait 2 minutes to watch, I might as well leave the ad running.
I would still guess people would rather block it and context switch for those 5-10 seconds or it could be preloaded for every video on the timeline which in turn just hurt Youtube's ad system. The reality is that adblock people are tech savy minority and it's not worth bending the whole ad pipeline out of shape just for that.
I guess we'll see how Google handles this but I don't think they can pull it off tbh.