this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2023
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I got mixed filling about this. Ads are annoying, but sponsor segment are one of the least-bad ads because they don't require tracking nor individual targeting. These segment target the audience as a whole without knowing anything about individual viewers.
Also more and more podcast offer ad-free feeds to paid subscribers.
This is also where I personally draw the line. I run adblock but I won't run sponsorblock.
Plus, some of the more considerate creators try to make it relevant to their viewers. It's slightly jarring to watch a cat video and then suddenly have the creator talk about VPNs. It's fine if they bring up a decent cat food or something, though.
At the same time, I've seen some videos (usually about gaming) where I've watched the whole video and then realised the entire video was sponsored. Those are my favourite.
The issue is most of this creators are just one person running the channel so they are not this big Media company and know everything about business.
Also sponsorship offers might only come from a VPN company or best offer might come from them therefore they might not be in a position to decide or they could just choose based on the best offer since most of them probably are relying on Youtube to make a living.
So this comes to that, you can watch it if you want to support that particular channel or maybe you care about the content, but you can not be hold liable for not watching it either since it's not your responsibility to think about their business or money or living for that matter.
Yeah, totally understand, it's just a little bizarre to have someone put down their cat to tell you about a VPN. Like you say, it's not necessarily their first choice. I think I made it sound too negative, that's my only criticism of sponsors and generally they're okay. They're just great if the creator can do it very naturally.
I've never blocked sponsors and never cared enough to. They need it to make money for providing useful content and that's okay. I prefer it to targeted, back-to-back ads.
Yeah definitely. It is much better than tracker filled ads. But for me, I mostly skip the sponsor segments just because I really don't like the advertisements. Especially from the channels like "LTT". But I sometimes wait for it to end when I watch a video from "The Linux Experiment" for example.