Is YouTube About to Blow Up Ad Blockers For Good?

[00:00:01] It's Friday June 14th, today has the final gauntlet been thrown? A technical change to how YouTube ads are delivered may break ad blockers for good. Meta backs down on AI training, LinkedIn's new promotional tools will cost you, and Spotify's latest announcement, is it bad news for digital agencies?

[00:00:24] I'm Tod Maffin, that's ahead, Today in Digital Marketing. YouTube ads might start getting more reach soon as the platform takes its battle against ad blockers to the next level. It's testing server-side ad injection, a technique that embeds ads directly into video streams.

[00:00:45] This makes ads indistinguishable from content for software and extensions that try to filter out advertising. The move of course part of YouTube's broader crackdown on ad blocking, which has seen target browser ad blockers and third-party YouTube apps popular on mobile.

[00:01:01] This is a big technical hurdle as it requires changes to YouTube's core video delivery infrastructure. But clearly, the company believes it's worth it in the long run. And hey, if they end up selling more ad-free premium subscriptions too along the way, no harm no foul.

[00:01:18] One user who went to the YouTube subreddit wrote, quote, looks like this has already been rolled out for me in the UK, logged on today and I'm getting 90 seconds of unskippable ads before every video.

[00:01:30] I beg someone finds a fix soon because I'm not watching YouTube like this, unquote. While consumers might hate it, marketers will probably like it. The move will of course get in front of more eyeballs, which helps everything. The campaign learning, the cost and potentially the results.

[00:01:54] It just got easier to put your ads in front of consumers while they're in an Uber. The rideshare company will now sell its Journey ads programmatically. This will let advertisers use demand side platforms like Google's Display and Video

[00:02:06] 360, the Trade Desk and Yahoo DSP to buy display and video ads in the Uber app. Uber claims that Journey ads deliver performance well above industry standard with a click-through rate of more than 3% and an average global view time of more than 100 seconds.

[00:02:23] In their own reported numbers, 80% of users said the ads caught their attention. This is another good example of how companies that never used to be ad companies are realizing the goldmine they sit on with their own first party data.

[00:02:37] Uber of course has details on where its customers tend to go and even what they eat thanks to their food delivery app. This move is part of Uber's broader effort to build its ad business with the goal of

[00:02:49] reaching $1 billion in annual ad revenue by the end of this year. Meta this morning put its much-talked-about AI assistant on ice in Europe. This after objections from Ireland's Data Protection Commission over Meta's scraping of its users' content to train the AI.

[00:03:11] Meta of course expressed disappointment saying they'd already taken regulatory feedback into account. Its process was to let people opt out by the end of this month but provided no information on how to remove the data if people missed that deadline and their content got ingested.

[00:03:27] The Irish independent news site noted that Meta's pause in data collection comes after Google and OpenAI had already used European users' data to train their AI models. Meta said if European regulators don't let them use their users' content to train

[00:03:43] their AI, they will only be able to deliver a subpar product. LinkedIn will soon have a new way for your company to stand out on its platform, though it's going to cost you. It's about six weeks away from launching something it calls Premium Company Pages,

[00:04:02] a subscription-based service aimed at small and medium-sized businesses. This is something they announced a while ago, now they say they're in the final stages of getting it up and running. Premium Company Page subscribers can add custom call-to-action buttons to generate

[00:04:16] leads, it comes with auto-invites for people who engage with your brand's content a lot, deeper insights into page visitors and the ability to display customer testimonials, plus of course even more AI-powered post-writing assistance because that's what we're all desperately clamoring for apparently.

[00:04:33] LinkedIn says Premium subscribers will receive more alerts from searchers looking for service quotes and the pages will be displayed in more areas of the platform and app. The subscription starts at $99 per month, although it's cheaper if paid annually.

[00:04:49] LinkedIn expects the Premium Company Pages to be globally available by the end of next month. Spotify has created an in-house creative agency that could compete for clients against the agencies it's already working with. It's called Creative Lab and it wants to work directly with brands to develop

[00:05:09] bespoke ad formats including video ads, in-app digital experiences and interactive ad formats including called action cards and so on. And in a move that somehow seems the opposite of a creative lab, it's rolling out an AI tool that will generate AI voiceovers for ads.

[00:05:27] It can also write script drafts, all that expected to be available in the ad manager soon. Spotify has more than 600 million monthly active users including 236 million paying subscribers. And finally, sounds like Elon Musk used his woke free AI tool Grok to do some math and things went south.

[00:05:53] X is pursuing at least six former Australian employees who were laid off demanding they return some of their severance payments because well, the company didn't do the currency conversion right. In some cases it resulted in a $1500 overpayment. In one case it was off by $70,000.

[00:06:13] X politely requested repayment quote, at your earliest convenience unquote. And oh yeah also in the same message we might sue you if you don't. One uninvolved lawyer reached for comment by Ars Technica said, if the error was

[00:06:27] genuine there is typically an obligation to return the overpaid funds under Australian employment law. So far, none of the former employees have repaid anything. Just a reminder there's no episode coming this Monday. This is because the summer news slowdown has started.

[00:06:46] Mondays are always a little bit slow in the news so from now until the end of the summer we will be publishing four episodes a week. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Rest assured you will not miss a single bit of Monday's news.

[00:06:58] Anything important that breaks on Mondays will be covered in the following days episode And if something huge breaks that's critical news we will publish a special Monday episode. We will return to Monday to Friday publishing in the fall when things pick up again

[00:07:10] news wise but that's why I will not be in your feed on Monday. And that will do it for the week. Today in digital marketing is produced by Engage Q Digital on the traditional territories of this new name first nation on Vancouver Island.

[00:07:22] Our production coordinator is Sarah Gild. Our theme is by Mark Bleviss at coordination by Red Circle. I'm Todd Maffin. Have a restful weekend friends and I will see you on Tuesday. For the ones who get it done. Single item at regular price.