So earlier this evening I was doing some housework whilst one of my youtube playlists of 80s music was playing. It was a playlist of songs I had compiled based on some precise singles chart statistical criteria (regarding which a new thread potentially coming from me somewhere in the next few weeks) and so I wasn't entirely familiar with a lot of the tracks and therefore didn't notice immediately when a track started playing that wasn't a part of the playlist. The track played for literally about 2 minutes before I realised it was Zara Larsson's Midnight Sun (which clearly I don't find especially memorable, otherwise I would have caught on sooner). When I looked at it I realised that the official music video on youtube was playing to me as an advert. Not an advert to advertise the existence of the music video, but the music video itself was the advert. Someone has paid Google Ads to show me (and presumably plenty of others) her music video as an advert. Have any of your experienced anything like this? It will have been playing it out from the same URL so it would count as a play of the music video, so will this now count for the singles chart? And how many other people got this as an advert and didn't skip for 30 seconds or more and thus inadvertently contributed to her sales figure for next week's chart? Will she miraculously and unexpectedly rocket up the chart out of nowhere next week? How many other tracks are rising above their fair position in each week's chart (even if only by one or two places) on the basis of playing out to youtube viewers as a paid advert?

Yes, I think I have had this in the past, but not from a highly successful track.

1 hour ago, GreyAsh said:

Yes, I think I have had this in the past, but not from a highly successful track.

Now you come to mention it I think I've had it on rare occasions in the past with completely unknown artists. I realise that the way youtube ads work literally anyone can pay Google Ads to circulate an ad for them on youtube, and they can name any youtube URL as being their ad, even if they don't own the video on the URL they name, so it could be any rich Zara Larsson fan who paid for it, or on the other hand it could have been the record label or some such.

This has been a known issue for quite a long time. Dope by Lady Gaga charted top 10 on the Hot 100 mostly because of YouTube adverts which simply played the song in full. And a few other songs charted high because of that.

Billboard eventually stopped counting streams from YouTube adverts. And I reckon other chart companies like the OCC also don't count them (not certain but we'd have probably noticed some major chart anomalies by now over the years if they were being counted).

Now, if you actually click on the advert and it takes you to the song's YouTube page and listen to the song there that would still count, but that's not really different to other forms of advertising. The song being randomly played to you in the form of an advert that you don't interact with wouldn't contribute any streams I don't think (definitely not on the Billboard charts).

Video streams contribute very little to the chart overall, let alone the tiny minority of streams that may come from people not skipping ads within 30 seconds (if those even count at all).