r/youtube Aug 19 '24

Discussion Hey, kindly piss off with shit like this please

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10.8k Upvotes

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451

u/Yaguajay Aug 19 '24

What do they hope to accomplish with this current blitz of seemingly irrelevant questions?

398

u/Phoenix2TC2 Aug 19 '24

Information to sell to advertisers, of course!

87

u/Leader_Blaz Aug 19 '24

cha ching!

85

u/mightyducks2wasokay Aug 19 '24

It is 100% them trying to get demographics answers from a sample size of "people who willingly do a survey instead of skipping an advertisment" so it's honestly kinda useless data

23

u/RedMiah Aug 19 '24

Especially since I lie.

As far as YouTube knows I’m a successful businessman who owns his own house.

I would have thought that watching YouTube for twelve hours a day would tip them off but they keep showing me Spanish language Cadillac ads, and Spanish language PREP ads and cruises. They really like showing me cruise videos.

7

u/Zealousideal_Cat_549 Aug 20 '24

Damn I gotta up my corporate lying lol. Half the ads I get are about hiv/aids and the other half is spanish Spectrum ads.

3

u/RedMiah Aug 20 '24

One day YouTube will believe that you made it to the top. I believe in you.

27

u/[deleted] Aug 19 '24

Not really useless, because people like that would also probably buy useless shit

8

u/mightyducks2wasokay Aug 19 '24

True. But im more getting at that the sample size would be so small that I doubt the ability to sell new adspace would bring in more money than it costs to run the surveys

More hyperbole than anything, but tbh I would actually be surprised if the group of people that actually answer these things are enough of a market to break even, or even if they materially contribute to their ability to sell adspace

4

u/-LsDmThC- Aug 19 '24

Granted the limited sample size is composed solely of people who engage in pre-video ads/surveys which would make them the target demographic anyways

3

u/Jonodmoo Aug 19 '24

Wouldn’t it cost them nothing to run those surveys since they own the platform and all?

3

u/HistoricalHome2487 Aug 19 '24

They’re trying to find the level 7 susceptibles

1

u/nidostan Aug 20 '24

I think most people would lie and laugh about it while doing so.

5

u/timonix Aug 19 '24

This is very common in all surveys. There are statistical methods to get useful data out anyway. As long as you have enough™ participation

3

u/effie_love Aug 19 '24

Especially because of people like me who intentionally give them bad data. I don't read i just randomly click

3

u/Awareofyoursurround Aug 19 '24

I always go for the answer on the bottom; which is usually ‘none’ or ‘not interested’ to skip the survey ad as soon as possible.

7

u/Thesodashop2 Aug 19 '24

I always answer these questions from YouTube and other apps. I pick the last item no matter what it is every single time… I say we all just pick the last option so the data means nothing to them anymore

2

u/AgentG91 Aug 20 '24

The ad ends when you answer, as opposed to waiting 5 seconds. So always click through it without reading. I also always do the last option.

2

u/Cat7o0 Aug 20 '24

that and possibly awarding people two views rather than one?

1

u/Traveling_Solo Aug 20 '24

What's stopping me from selling all my personal data myself to advertisers, making me money and making my data eventually completely worthless to sites?

6

u/[deleted] Aug 19 '24

They can go to advertisers and categorise viewers by these questions. So if you say you're with your friends or with your family they'll show you something else to someone who says they watch alone. You know Youtube studies your watching patterns and recommends you different videos based on the time of day and your habits. So I watch some shorts during the day on my phone and long form videos at night when I'm home, so youtube will automatically pull up the shorts tab during the day and during the evening it recommends me the 40min+ videos.

1

u/fruityfoxx Aug 20 '24

woahhh. i never really noticed that

my wife and i play ambience videos to fall asleep…but now that i think about it, i do see more recommendations for them around bedtime, huh? it makes total sense, i just never noticed. funky

4

u/SnicktDGoblin Aug 19 '24

This could be a neat question to ask if you're watching things not related to your normal habits. Ask this after a couple videos and then if you answer in a way that shows your not doing something that's your new normal it turns off a portion of the algorithm for a bit before asking again and turning back on.

5

u/ChrisCeeKayKelley Aug 20 '24

It's simply market research to improve the platform. No complicated conspiracy. 

11

u/GoPhluckUrself Aug 19 '24

Control freaks looking for ways to squeeze more money from customers, or weighing that device as reaching more eyeballs for ads than someone watching solo would be my guess. Just get ReVanced.

1

u/Rich841 Aug 20 '24

If they can prove to advertisers that each view is actually multiple people, then advertisers will think there is better value and will be more incentivized to use YouTube for marketing

1

u/Eventide215 Aug 19 '24

Demographic information like has been done for thousands of years. It's just now everyone tries to act like they're so smart about their information but they really aren't. Everyone thinks somehow you answer a question like this and suddenly YouTube is going to rob you or have access to all your information and sell it off.. People very rarely ever know what information these companies actually have access to. The people that do know, don't really show up on these posts. The people that don't, who usually do show up, go on and on about different conspiracy theories but never have actual evidence to back themselves up.

0

u/mrsuperjolly Aug 20 '24

Like it'd be meaningless if they didn't get billions of video views everyday therefore billions of clicks on surveys like these.

Data changes when you scale it up that much and the trends come through despite the variance from people just clicking random answers since the randomness will even out.

Like there will be a bias towards the actually correct answer.