- YouTube is testing server-side ad injection to counter ad blockers, integrating ads directly into videos to make them indistinguishable from the main content.
- This new method complicates ad blocking, including tools like SponsorBlock, which now face challenges in accurately identifying and skipping sponsored segments.
- The feature is currently in testing and not widely rolled out, with YouTube encouraging users to subscribe to YouTube Premium for an ad-free experience.
And yet Google is investing all this time and money into trying to block the blockers. It’s really quite stupid.
Well, most of their efforts have been relatively low cost on their end. Stuff like manifest v3 isn’t actually particularly expensive to do. Just requires you to have near total capture of the web browser market.