YouTube never hid that its “free” service was really “free if you watch our advertising”. But they’ve gotten increasingly aggressive at enforcing the bargain. First they slowed load times for users who block ads and now (users say) ad-blocked videos skip immediately to the end.
It was fun while it lasted, but AI vendors can no longer scrape training data from the internet without paying for it. Bowing to the inevitable, OpenAI continues to rack up partnerships with premium publishers. Following last week’s deal with NewsCorp, it has now added Vox Media (New York, The Verge, Eater) and The Atlantic magazine.
If it seems petty for YouTube to ad block users, consider this: The Trade Desk reports that YouTube-parent Google and Facebook captured less than 47% of digital ad spend in 2023, compared with over 53% in 2019. The change reflects a shift in consumer time from walled gardens (62% in 2014 vs. 39% in 2023), to “open internet” alternatives including connected TV, streaming music, and podcasts (38% in 2014 vs. 61% in 2023).
Customer engagement platform MessageGears will partner with content localization and translation platform Smartling to streamline email translation and localization for 450+ languages. The workflow is automated but actual translations are still done by (machine-assisted) humans.