Peertube: Ability for users to add ad videos to play with their uploaded videos.

[McFlat]

Users could use a way to add advertisement videos that would play in the beginning or start after a certain amount of time after the video plays to play a single video ad or out of a list of video ads the user uploaded. This way users can make money from uploading videos and perhaps transition from a day job to spending time making good videos if visitors are willing to buy whatever products they are promoting.

The user could have a list of ads they upload and then specify which ad starts where at what time and on what videos. If they have promotors they can assign a video ad to play before the video and after a certain amount of time the video plays. Giving the user full control of when a promotion comes up for a device or product they are unboxing or are doing a video about, etc.

This would work by using a VAST video ad spec. VideoJS has a plugin for that.
https://github.com/theonion/videojs-vast-plugin

[scanlime]

yes, use these, it seems like my firewall and adblocker already know about this library :D

[XenonFiber]

Ads are actually in the FAQ: https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/blob/develop/FAQ.md#are-you-going-to-support-advertisements

And you can't use them ethically anyway.

[McFlat]

It would be user ads, not ads determined by the instance, it would allow the user to play a video before another video, or at a specific timeline in the video or before the video ends, etc. It wouldn't be actual ads per-say, it would be basically channel sponsor videos a channel wants to play along their videos so to allow them to sponsor VPN providers or to say a message about how to donate to their channel to support their efforts. It wouldn't be annoying ads from hollywood or big pharma etc

Plus most advertisers(all of them) wouldn't want to have their ads show up before a video about illuminati exposed or freemasons exposed videos.

[XenonFiber]

@McFlat I still think that's going to be pretty annoying for the viewer to have to deal with unwanted content before they can actually get to/finish up the video they clicked on. I'm assuming they'll be somewhere around 5-30 seconds?

[McFlat]

@XenonFiber What we can do for that then is have an option in the user settings to skip user ads. Users can select either to watch the user ad or to not watch it, we wouldn't force it on them, we can have an option for that, and not make them pay for it to skip the ads. Especially since the ads would be user uploaded video ads, some users may want to watch them in order to find out more how to support the user channel. This way the user doesn't have to talk about that in their video they can focus on the content of the video and not promoting themselves to be sponsored or to get donations, they can upload a video ad that does it, then visitors can see the ad or choose to skip it, based on their settings.

We would allow users to define the timeline of when they want to ad to start, initially we could make it before the video starts playing only, and later we can extend it to allow users to define when they want it to play.

The problem with ad networks is they load their scripts in the page and are able to spy out the visitors of a site this way, but with the ability for users to add their own ads it gets rid of that.

[XenonFiber]

@McFlat Ads aren't a good addition to a project meant to improve on the problems with YouTube (and it's clones).

If it's something important to the creator and their video, it should really be in the video (or description). I'm sure there's people who'd still run ads and sponsored material anyway, and the ability skip those ads would only be possible if they were specifically set apart like this, but if we don't want capitalistic sponsored content to be the default, it shouldn't be built into the software.

[DavidLibeau]

I'm really an anti-ad guy. But I think that we better need a configurable preroll video ad rather than a fixed ad in the content that is there forever. It will be better if we can have this ad for a limited time and don't touch the content. Plus we have the power to allow opt-in ads, like Utip and similars are doing, with an educationnal warning. But I think that we can let this to an external plugin.

[Mieos]

Actually, I think it might be a good feature that would allow some professional video makers to see in peertube an appealing alternative to Youtube when it comes to monetizing their works.
I’m not very fond of ads neither but it is often see as the best compromise when it comes to live from your work on Youtube. Sponsored videos are most of the time seen as something negative for the user and the creator, and participative fundings solutions such as UTip or Tippe are always seen as risky and not-that appealing solution for the creator. Relying on others generosity can always be seen as something unpleasant, I think that’s why a lot of people avoid this solution, fearing the feeling to owe something to people.
Moreover, the fact that peertube is an independent platform would allows the users not to be concerned by the new europeans laws concerning the copyrights. Indeed, it would not be the streaming platform that would pay the creator but the ad platform. So it would not the video directly that would create the money..
For these reasons, I think it is clearly not a bad idea especially as it would only be an optional stuff for the creator and as ads would also be detect and blocked by any adblockers anyway.

[Bugsbane]

Having ads be defined rather than built into the content also allows options like "click to skip" and blocking by ad blockers. If the ads are built into the video content itself, it actually gives the viewers less autonomy to skip them. Ironically, if the default on PeerTube becomes for ads to be in the video content itself, then ironically people who have ad blockers installed could end up seeing more ads on PeerTube than on YouTube...

[drequivalent]

User-defined pre-roll videos might be useful not really as advertisements, but for example as temporary announcements.
Like, if the creator that makes a periodical videoblog about, I dunno, tech, but wants to announce to their audience that they'll be leaving for the next week for, say, medical reasons, they might preroll the announcement to their latest video. As soon as this anouncement becomes irrelevant, they just remove it leaving the content clean and on-point.

[buoyantair]

I don't think ads are a sane way to support your content creators. Ads are one of the reasons why the internet is the way it is today (Look at Google, Facebook). I think we should set the new grounds and learn from the disasters of Youtube. Periodic subscription model makes sense. A Patreon / Librepay like model makes sense.

@drequivalent Hey that's actually a good idea, but it's pretty easy for anyone to just abuse it for ads in my opinion.

[IvanlokoBR]

HELLO, I met the system recently but I think it is essential to have ads because people create content to earn money like youtubers and create a website that does not generate profit for the host or for the user, he will just ignore the platform and use another one. Summing up for the growth of Peertube, something flashy is necessary and even if ads are bad, servers are expensive and so far I don't see the advantage of paying a server to store Peertube while keeping costs out of my pocket.

[Chocobozzz]

You can now develop a plugin that adds ads to the player.