When channels are claiming their view count is dropping 30% but still earning the same amount of money, that would indicate that they are losing out on 30% of their potential revenue because of ad blockers.
Creators can now though, knowing how much they make per view on avg, and slot in the avg number of view that were missing, work out how much they are missing out on due to ad-blocking.
For large creators, it's likely in the tens of thousands of dollars per video assuming most are seeing the same ~20-25% drop.
Eventually the "morally pure" internet will need to reconcile it's habit of not compensating creators.
Creators have stated that while their viewcount is down their ad revenue is not - but a lower viewcount still presumably hurts youtubers for in video sponsorships, and if some genres of video have a higher portion of users with blockers, that probably hurts that entire genre in the algorithm. It sounds like viewcounts are returning back to normal though.
not really, because watching videos without ad blockers would be quite painful
If I were Google I wouldn’t be that worried about, like, Firefox users with ad blocking addons, or pihole users. But I’d be a bit worried that Apple might take a harder stance against ads, in their browser.
https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2025/digging-deeper-youtub...
Do you have any evidence of this or are you just making it up? Because you are saying it like it's confirmed and you know the metric call.
(1) Hey, imagine I had a plugin that monitored the behavior of several viewers of each video and could collate where most people skipped a big chunk of video, then, oh I don't know, offered a feature where if lots of people skip one chunk, it'll automatically skip it for you when you're playing the video....
Nah, that'll never work.
IIRC it even has lots of options such as enabling you to allow/disallow self-sponsor segments (the creator promoting their own product), "like and subscribe" calls to action, shock-and-awe intros, podcast recaps, and several other segment types.
I guess if everyone was hit equally across the board then those sponsors will eventually adjust to the new metrics, but I assume some genres have more tech-savvy audiences which are more likely to use ad-blockers, so I'm not sure how evenly distributed this penalty falls.
Is it? If I proactively click skip, that means that sponsor is offering something of no use to me. As the sponsor, they successfully make an impression for a second or two anyway. And as a viewer that skip ahead button is much better than pressing right arrow button multiple times
Remember how Youtube used to be a nice cage with lots of air holes and fun toys to occupy you? Light ad enforcement, tools to help you build your viewership etc? People are starting to feel the pinch of those being removed. That cool room is starting to look like what it really is--an industrial cage.
Except viewer counts are a factor for baked in ads. In this case, all the sleuthing and videos about the change are the probably the only thing that will alleviate/lessen the seemingly-worse ad rate negotiation position youtubers with less viewers suddenly find themselves in.
The ad business is far older than the internet and there is a lot of old knowledge that apples directly to the internet. Those buying backed in ads should be aware of and tracking such efforts.
Same with twitter.
Considering I have zero interest in this stuff it seems their algorithm pushes such trash by cross-referencing with the closest thing possible - even by a digital picometer distance.
Mine is just a sewage firehose so yes, I watch less now, and I use NewPipe on mobile to have a chance to see my subscriptions.
I only see my subscriptions, or things directly related to things I've watched and liked. If I remove a disliked video from my watch history, it "mostly" works to tell YouTube I don't want to see it anymore.
I very seldom see crap I really do not want in my YouTube feed/recommendations. All I see are hobby videos and cartoon clips of things I like.
This is totally unlike Facebook (where random garbage recommendations are the norm) or Reddit (which is hit or miss).
And please, let me opt out of Shorts permanently. I keep telling them I don't want shorts but they always come back. I pay for a Premium account, so they should resepect my wishes on this.
On another browser it shows me mostly videos about stereo equipment.
One yet another it shows me a mix of videos aimed at someone who listens to The Ezra Klein Show. That browser and the previous browser sometimes get a burst of videos about "How Brand X has lost its way" or "Why Y sucks today".
One time on shorts I clicked on a video where an A.I. generated woman transforms into a fox on America's Got Talent and then after that it wanted to show me hundreds of A.I. slop videos of Chinese girls transforming into just about anything on the same show with the same music and the same reaction shots.
If you click on a few Wheat Waffles videos you might quickly find your feed is nothing but blackpill incel videos and also videos that apply a blackpill philosophy to life such that not only is dating futile but everything else is futile too.
The conclusion I draw from it is that you can't easily draw conclusions about the experience other people have with recommenders, it's one reason why political ads on social are so problematic, you can tell baldfaced lies to people who are inclined to believe them and skeptical people will never see them and hold anyone to account.
My recommendations are entirely in line with what I watch. I never need to check channels i like for a new video because they automatically get recommended.
If yours is a sewage firehouse, are you logged in? Or are you sharing your account with family members who watch what you consider "sewage"?
And lately they're starting to get more malicious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaHW24jOYVw
And I'm quite deliberate with avoiding ragebait and slop, and I remove stuff from my watch history if I get duped etc.
That said, I have noticed a trend amongst the creators I've subscribed to that the average video length has gone up. This has been a longer term trend, but many who used to do 30-40 min videos now often to 1-1.5 hr videos.
I've heard YouTube punishes people quitting a video midway, so perhaps there's something going on there too. At least for myself I often have to watch these videos over multiple sessions, and chances are there that I just forget and move on.
So perhaps some compounding factors making things worse.
Infact, i used to watch videos because they used to be more "targeted" at problem solving when i ran into any issues.
but these days LLM ftw.
What's your use case?
I might be in some A/B test tho.
Does anyone realize how many missed views this implies??
100% this. They were even threatening him with facing the ire of social media if he didn't reopen the issue.
Whether or not you consider that an issue shrug but it's not directly YT's fault.
This might temporarily lead to a collapse in video creator business, but in the long run might result in more viable businesses for creators, without them having to push shit onto their viewers. Make videos and enjoy them being seen, or make paid content and have people pay for that, but don't try to shoehorn it into viewing videos that are accessible for anyone running a Youtube search.
And extensions such as SponsorBlock [1], which help user skipping sponsored sections or useless intros in videos.
What they are missing is proof I’ve watched the ads - which I haven’t.
It should be noted that YouTube income is unaffected by this, as Ads are still shown and counted to people without AdBlockers. So this is only harmful to the creators, and not YouTube.
Pretty sure this is harmful to youtube as well as it lowers the value (less personalization data) for advertisers. Also the knock-on effect of impacting creators, meaning less investment in creating content.
That being said, I've always hated this business model. It's created so many other problems in our society. Resulting in a shift to authoritarian leadership in many countries.
If I kept coming everyday, multiple times a day, and never paid "because its bad", it's extremely unlikely that I don't like the lemonade, and extremely likely that I just like that it's free as long as I complain.
It's your choice to go to youtube and watch the video. No one is forcing that on you. Youtube is a service that is offered. If you don't like youtube or the ads, you can not use the service. Just like no one is forcing you to go to the lemonade stand.
Someone you care to watch not making enough money to make the things you like to watch is your concern, because making equivalent content yourself is out of your reach.
If "smart" people use ad-block, then all the content gravitates towards those who don't.
* University lectures
* Conference talks
* Random clips of homeowners doing some DIY repair
i.e. things that were being done anyway, and someone decided to post it online because it's free and they wanted to be helpful. "Content creators" are already almost never making videos with high value information. The entire idea of "creating content" rather than "sharing information" is a bad framing to start from. When we recognize that "sharing information" is the high-value action, we're better able to see that it not only can be done by someone who isn't a full-time "creator", but may actually be done better by people who aren't devoted to it since their occupation is to be a practitioner of the field they're sharing information about. i.e. they are better informed.
And if you watch videos, there is a chance you also enjoy them, so it would be in your own interest to support creators in making more of them. But that's a bit more complicated.
The context that I am thinking about is, for example, a small hobbyist that might rely on the added value for making some odd things, requiring exotic hardware, quantities of materials that could be prohibitively expensive or the lend of access to said hardware might be blocked behind viewership metrics, and there this might make some difference, and I personally enjoy those little odd channels and this is why I, as a viewer, might care about it. But again, I totally see where you are coming from.
Personally I would even prefer anything that allows for a Youtube alternative to do better.
Where does line go? If a future "Adblocker 3000" don't let advertisers capture you eyemovements in realtime 30 times per second, would that be sad?
Seems the ball is with Youtube. They can compensete and pay out more. Or not.
Examples: Caspian report, Warfronts, Geopolitics decoded, ...
Many of them (the content creator) are even located in the same city.
I can throw a dart and hit a random podcast that has been sponsored by blue chew for years, but that doesn't mean said podcast is funded by them or bends to their whims.
IMO your comment is pure conspiracy theory.
Just curious, but can't they be both?
I don't know those channels. The one I regularly see are very diverse in their partners, and usually the content is unrelated to the promotions. But overall those promotions are negotiated based on viewer counts, and at a certain size, they are more valuable than earnings from ads.
I run a couple different privacy add-ons for various different levels of blocking things, but the Firefox update has seriously broken a lot of stuff
If you are tech or tech-adjacent content, it can double or triple that.
Wouldn't surprise me if we now see a new trend of "click like, bell, and suscribe and don't forget to disable your ad blocker!".
Obviously they don't care about these views since they are not generating ad revenue. Youtubers who use view counts for sponsor deals etc do care though.
Laughs in SponsorBlock
Reminds me of F1 racing coverage on a free-to-air German TV network being reduced to a letterbox..
For example Linus Tech Tips wearing his clothing in his videos and using his screwdriver. For car and/or hardware channels I often see sponsors products being used throughout the video as well, which you can't skip with Sponsor block.
I think it’s pretty clear that other forms of sponsorships also drive revenue to advertisers (whatever people may feel about that)
Surely this one given what they wrote.
> which you can't skip
This is not definitive proof that easylist caused the view drops, but it’s I’ve read the issue and a writeup by a YouTube creator and it seems pretty likely.
Turns out YouTube has a lot of analytics.
To get exact metrics, you should use discount codes that are unique for each channel. Then you will know the exact amount of sales each sponsorship is netting.
It's sad to see how little sympathy there is for people other than oneself and how changes are affecting the larger ecosystem. Especially for a site as critical as YouTube to people's livelihoods.
Though having said that, at the same time I'm not surprised that someone who spends their time modifying sites to remove ads and analytics to make their personal experience better at the expense of everyone else would act this way would have this kind of selfish mindset.
This is hard to take seriously in defense of YouTube. I suppose the most respectful answer is that I'll be willing to stop when they do.
Tracking with javascript.
It changes what they assume to do with my hardware and user agent.
I’m not going to sit through two 15-30 second LOUD ads just to see if a video is actually worth watching.
And I do use referral codes for the content creators I do like. My Amazon referrals do still work.
As a mostly software backend dev I even visualize the JS guy saying "it's solved" when he forgets to tell that the correct choice is to do the counting on the backend, period. Not hacking a crappy JS snippet calling a different host.
I obviously ask for more time to make sure it's reliable.
I literally saw something similar happening around some years ago in a adjacent team I was working.
I want to pay with money, not attention. Both at the same time? Non negotiable.
Ad blockers (especially for complex sites and data streams) are basically like using a chainsaw to remove a mosquito(1); sometimes innocuous or beneficial features get omitted too because they're too "ad-shaped" for the heuristic.
(1) Anyone who thinks I'm under-selling the risks of unblocked ads has never seen the consequence of an unlucky bite from Aedes aegypti.
Not sure about the chainsaw analogy, but I guess Aedes Aegypti is a fair metaphor for the cumulative effect of the tiny daily (hourly?) annoyance of the free-with-ads model.
https://techcrunch.com/2022/12/22/fbi-ad-blocker/
YouTube is one of the worst offenders for scam ads. Even today you sometimes find an ad that talks about some scary health risk and points to some ad that drones on and on for 45 minutes and if you get to the end they try to sign you up for an $80 a month subscription for some worthless supplement.
With all the money that Google has plowed into AI, they clearly could solve this problem if they want to. The fact that it's still an issue means they don't care, or are happy to take the ad money from the fraudsters.
> Use an ad blocking extension when performing internet searches. Most internet browsers allow a user to add extensions, including extensions that block advertisements. These ad blockers can be turned on and off within a browser to permit advertisements on certain websites while blocking advertisements on others.
So the specific recommendation is that you turn on an ad blocker while performing searches. Why are they so concerned about searches? It's because of a specific form of fraud, where someone purchases an ad pretending to be the business your searching for, but actually takes you "to a webpage that looks identical to the impersonated business’s official webpage" - that is, a phishing scam.
That's way more limited than the "FBI recommends ad blocker" statement would lead you to believe. From the FBI's point of view, pitching a bullshit supplement in an ad (what you're talking about) is an entirely legitimate business practice, and selling supplements is legal in the US so long as you don't make certain medical claims or imply FDA approval.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20221222162340/https://www.ic3.g...
Creators are not reporting any declines in ad revenue that match the drop in view count. Indeed several have reported revenue is the same despite the view count drop. So it's quite unlikely people are fed up with youtube in any meaningful way.
This specific case is about an unusual high drop of viewers specifically on desktops on a specific date. The assumptions are, that it's just too unusual for the normal drop in that timeframe, so it has to be a bug of some kind. Would it be a normal drop in viewers, it would not be on a specific date, months after the problems with AdBlocks started.
Agree to disagree. That's kind of the point of an ad blocker.
If you want to support creators, stop blocking their ads.
Do you think someone like Louis Rossman, who wants to use Youtube to share his message but doesn't use YT as a business, would rather views or ad money?
As someone with a small tech channel, I'm glad I was following this. If not, I would have spent the last week swapping out thumbnails and video titles, which seem about as effective as percussive maintenance. But hey, you have to try something.
Well over a decade ago a gentleman by the name of Brian Brushwood said, and I'm paraphrasing, “YouTube is like working for an AI manager that never tells you what it wants but punishes you severely if you get it wrong.”
Welcome to 2025.
There's no way you can say the same about YouTube, the value proposition is quite good and it leveled the field in a way traditional media would never do, just think for a moment what's the chance of seeing someone like MrBeast surging as a TV personality.
Why should I not filter ads from a provider who is OK with people stealing from me?
Due to YT/G's moral failings to host a sufficiently serviceable platform for their product, your eyes, then your only real recourse outside adblocking is to buy a device and put on a separate network with no reasonably important traffic.
I don't lose one bit of sleep knowing that adblocking prevents Google from externalizing their curation costs onto me.
Morally you should stop using youtube.
It's incredible how people mental gymnastics there way into a solution that provides themselves all the benefit and pat themselves on the back for being morally righteous.
When you don't like something, you don't use it. It sends a clear message that you don't like the product/service. Using it and not compensating for it (because you actually do like it, just on your terms) is not moral or a good signal in anyway way, shape, or form.
> When you don't like something, you don't use it.
Morality in your approach is absolute, and it represents the best possible outcome.
For all others stuck in the morass, you must navigate the BATNA.
Sounds about right for Google.
NotPractical•2h ago
If the answer to both is no, maybe Google's intentionally punishing creators whose viewers use adblockers. But if the goal is to force creators to ask their viewers to stop using adblockers, then why would they not also just admit that they're doing this rather than leaving it up to speculation?
pimlottc•2h ago
lotsofpulp•2h ago
cogman10•1h ago
I imagine most don't think about ads seriously, they think about youtube and sponsor revenue.
lotsofpulp•1h ago
cogman10•54m ago
It is, but it's functionally different because the content creator you are watching is both directly getting that revenue and often doing the testimonial for you. They have an incentive to avoid being annoying about the ad as it reflects bad on them if they go nuts. It's also usually a lot easier to skip. It doesn't capture your video playback and force watching.
The money you get from youtube make things ambiguous. Especially if someone is watching your stream with youtube premium.
bluGill•1h ago
Even if you earn money from ads, view count is only a proxy at best. Youtube seems to track ads seen not view count (payments from youtube have not changed). Other ads track effectiveness of the ad, and viewcount is only a proxy - if youtube changes the count it means that the constant applied to viewcount in the formula changes but otherwise the payment is the same.
Thus if you get significant money from YouTube adds you care about ad blocking. None of the others need to care (they might, but it could go either way how they feel)
PaulHoule•1h ago
That kind of creator expresses a lot of negativity towards YouTube, as X is frequently "YouTube" or "Google" and Y is "Big Tech", "Social Media", etc.
jordanb•2h ago
My guess is that yeah, now they're going after people's sponsorship revenue by under-reporting views if their monetized content is being viewed by people with adblockers.
bluSCALE4•2h ago
portaouflop•1h ago
izacus•2h ago
Do you have any article about that? How much did the monetization drop for?
the_af•1h ago
izacus•41m ago
s1mplicissimus•2h ago
ge96•2h ago
rwmj•2h ago
vintermann•2h ago
Oh, that one is easy to understand. They want to change the sentiment to "adblockers are bad, it's basically stealing" but they know it won't work if people see them as the source of the message. They want video makers to internalize their message, do what the boss wants on their own initiative, so Google only want to drop hints.
thewebguyd•1h ago
Ah yes, the good old "don't copy that floppy" argument.
The advertising industry brought this upon themselves. The web is straight up unusable without an ad blocker. Between malicious ads, drive-by-downloads, content shifting, and other dark patterns, websites are now more ads than content.
It's like in the days of streaming (when it was still good and not enshitified) reducing piracy rates - companies can get me to disable my ad blocker if they start becoming good citizens actually make their site or service usable without it.
Get rid of the invasive tracking, dark patterns, un-dismissable modals, etc. Stop jamming your content so full of ads and SEO spam and maybe I wouldn't need an ad blocker as much.
PaulHoule•1h ago
yard2010•1h ago
Well I definitely would if I could torrent it. Facebook would have too.
NewsaHackO•10m ago