I watch a channel with a guy who runs a car negotiation business and streams it, because car dealerships are annoying to work with.
Car dealerships and salespeople often offer similar objections to his business as well as customers who want a good deal.
They’ll say things like “we’re losing money on this car” or “a business needs to make a profit.”
And his objection to that is always the same: the customer doesn’t care about that, and it’s not their problem. If your business model delivers something that people see value in, you’re more likely to be able to make a profit. Customers obviously don’t see much value in the car dealerships.
I certainly don’t want my favorite YouTubers to go broke, but their business model is not my problem. The fact is that I refuse to watch ads. I don’t see value in watching an ad. In some cases I’m willing to pay for that privilege, like how I can get sponsor-free viewing from many YouTube channels on Nebula.
But, sorry, if I’m allowed to skip forward in a video to skip an ad, I’m going to do it. And if I’m not allowed to skip around in a video platform to the part of the video I want to watch, I’m probably not going to be using that video platform.
The reality is that most YouTube sponsors already know that a certain percentage of viewers will skip their sponsor segment, even manually without a tool like this, or using YouTube Premium’s included Skip Ahead feature, just like a TV advertiser knows that a certain percentage of viewers will change the channel during ads, mute the TV, or go to the bathroom during an ad segment.
I have a friend who refuses to buy premium versions of popular streaming services like Disney+ and actually prefers to have the advertising. They even said “my kids will see ads” almost like they want their kids to experience the childhood they did. It’s a bit of a strange philosophy to me but I kind of see where they’re coming from: advertisements are something of a cultural experience, like how you can play back a super soaker advertisement for me and I’ll get some intense nostalgic feelings.