Automatic Ads (Day 2560 - 11/27/16)

Previous Vlog (Day 2559) | Next Vlog (Day 2561)

People

 * Stephen
 * Kepler
 * Sagan

Locations

 * Stephen and Mal's house

Summary
There was a YouTube glitch the other day that ruined Stephen's Let's Play videos.

Context: Stephen frequently places a single mid-roll ad during some of his longer videos. He always places these ads in clever places: between map transitions, during loading screens, or before major reveals. He also places only one mid-roll ad per video to help increase viewer retention.

By contrast, YouTube has a feature called "Automatic Ads" that places a bunch of ads willy-nilly throughout all videos. Sometimes, the algorithm will place no ads at all.

Last night, Stephen discovered that all of StephenPlays had automatic ads placed in each video, thus erasing all the work Stephen has done in all of the channel's history. He has fixed the last three weeks' worth of content, but the sheer volume of the work is impossible for him to do.

The worst part of this is that there is no way to fix the problem. He'll have to contact someone at YouTube to figure out what actually happened.

In slightly better news, the bookshelves are up and things are getting put away.