- 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.
In theory this could be beaten by using a link to a timestamp at 1 second in. If it starts at 0, it’s an ad.
That would work for ads before the content, but not if they are spliced into the running video.
Use a timestamp link for now, if it gets a different time than requested, there’s an ad.
I’m sure some algorithm could be written to beat it. Still crappy overall but figured they’d do this sooner or later.