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Comment by steveBK123 | Hacker News Reader

A funny anecdote that's not fraud but puts a bit more ambiguity into the alleged targeted ad eyeballs even from the big players. There's a good amount of "ambient" content on YouTube these days. Some not targeted at adults or even humans.

I have been playing YouTube videos on my TV of birds & wildlife, for my house cats to enjoy. There is one guy who makes 8 hour long videos. There is one content creator basically targeting this market of "birds for your cats to watch".

I have noticed that the YouTube app on my Samsung TV will play for an unbelievable number of hours without any "are you still watching" prompt. Easily 6 hours!!

I've been playing them videos almost daily for weeks and only got this prompt this weekend finally.

So some companies probably think they are paying for targeted ads to some category like "people interested in cats / wildlife", YouTube collects a cut and pays the content creator a cut. All this for feline-only eyeballs.

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That's why my cat recently ordered a casper mattress

Next, the cat will upgrade that meager 55" to a 75". A new fridge with bottom freezer will follow. Kitty must be comfy, else kitty will find new home

I do the same thing, but in my case it's guinea pig eyeballs. But I'm a Premium subscriber so I don't get ads anyway.

Kids videos on YouTube[0] is another vector of techincally-not-fraudulent-but-very-low-value ad inventory. The stats on those videos also tend to be highly suspicious - i.e. basically no comments but millions of views and likes. Normally you'd call this bots, but then you realize that small children are literally incapable of commenting on all those Pregnant Elsa & Spiderman videos they are subjecting themselves to.

[0] Not to be confused with YouTube Kids, a subbrand/app intended for small children to satisfy US COPPA

What kind of content are your guinea pig eyeballs watching? I have 2 and would like to put them a video and see what they do.

Uh right now the YouTube recommendation gods are sending them Little Adventures, Guinea Pig Jungle, and LA Guinea Pig Rescue.

The latter is actually a really good treasure trove of care information, too.

I have played serval hours of an ambient ocean sounds vid on YouTube and the only advertising was at the beginning. That was years ago, but I suspect they intentionally avoid inserting advertising in the middle of such videos.

These videos actually have frequent ads throughout the video like any monetized content

And because no one is there to skip them after 5 seconds, my cat gets the full length ad served..

It's hilarious

That’s not fair to the kitty. Why can’t they skip ads too? Let’s get the European nut bags to draft up some ridiculous legislation like GDPR that forces advertisers to put another pop up warning potential ata they can’t skip these ads

Could be because some people actually watch these videos and click skip occasionally. The sea sounds was a static image so I doubt people just stared at the empty screen for very long.

Ironically, it seems like the best indicator an actual human is there to view your ad would be if they skipped them after 5 seconds or watched the whole thing.

Hmm, that raises the question whether marketing can be made cost effective. One would need to get the cat excited about a product that it can somehow instruct its human caretaker about...

Until somebody finds a way to use that. E.g. play scary ads to the cat, display ads showing cat anxiety specialists to the cat owner.

Maybe the ads are really effective, but you just need a cat translator to know how effective the ads are on your cats? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5JuVHCJVYf4

Actual cat translator: "I want to kill those pretty birds".

Don't undererstimate how much human will actually spend to please the feline fellow.

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