This week YouTube hosted Brandcast 2025 in which it revealed how marketers could make better use of the platform to connect with customers.
A few new so-called innovations were announced at the event but one has caught the attention of the internet – Peak Points. This new product makes use of Gemini to detect “the most meaningful, or ‘peak’, moments within YouTube’s popular content to place your brand where audiences are the most engaged”.
Essentially, YouTube will use Gemini and probably the heatmap generated on YouTube videos by people skipping to popular points, to determine where to place advertising. Anybody who has grown up watching terrestrial television where adverts arrive as a way to build suspense will understand how annoying Peak Points could become.
I have a Google account specifically for logging into YouTube. I’ve aggressively used the like/hide channel/not interested in this video options to force it to actually show me what I want. It took quite a while to train it, but my YouTube homepage is actually nice right now.
But every so often I’ll go on YouTube logged out and it’s like staring into the sun. The top videos that it pushes seem like brain melting garbage.
Strangely I haven’t had any issues with Firefox+Ublock+Sponsorblock. The way YouTube interacts with seemingly the same sets of software for different people is baffling.
I’ve gone the opposite route. I never log in, and remove all cookies. I almost always use an incognito tab for YouTube. I’m a new visitor to them every time, in as much as that’s possible. I use bookmarks to go back to creators I want to see, and occasionally check them. No subscriptions either, which may suck for the creator, but at least they get my views.
I like the convenience of being shown all my subscriptions, and with a trained algorithm actually being shown suggestions I’d be interested in. I think with an account used just for YouTube and nothing else the value to Google is minimal. It’s the last thing I have left from de-googling everywhere else.
i dont log into to youtube most of the time, just draws unnessary attention, from other users.
Can you elaborate? Using a compartmentalized account just to watch videos seems it shouldn’t draw any attention unless you’re getting into fights in the comments.