Very surprised they haven't started this long ago. One might suspect the problem is ad play and click accounting.
Anyway, when they start delivering ads in-band, the next step for blockers is to identify that first keyframe in the player by using a pool of shared signatures, right? So then player clients will need adblock plugins which will have a sizeable signature distribution infra and grief for clients.
Then the anti-blocker might begin adding, per-play instead of per-video, a pixel or something to throw off the signatures, massively increasing THEIR video distribution infra. Ad infinitum?
ah yes, AAI (Artificial-AI) AKA I (Intelligence), or "Crowdsourcing" if you're looking to use an older buzzword. I do think there's a few models trained on sponsorblock already, but they're not great.
...which will be countered by AI-enabled midroll ad generation. A neural network that splices two video clips together must already be a thing, right? The advertisers would probably want this even without adblockers, since everyone already has an adblocker in their mind called 'inattentional blindness'. Using AI to subtly segue into the ad rather than cutting would stop some portion of users from tabbing out, checking their phones or just going AFK during ad breaks.
Anyway, when they start delivering ads in-band, the next step for blockers is to identify that first keyframe in the player by using a pool of shared signatures, right? So then player clients will need adblock plugins which will have a sizeable signature distribution infra and grief for clients.
Then the anti-blocker might begin adding, per-play instead of per-video, a pixel or something to throw off the signatures, massively increasing THEIR video distribution infra. Ad infinitum?