The Cost of Default
How Much Advertiser Money Is Wasted on Low-Quality YouTube Inventory
Waste on YouTube is the predictable output of default settings, not an accident.
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Default settings, priced.
- of spend lands on low-quality inventory before intervention
- 20%of spend lands on low-quality inventory before interventionObserved across Filament accounts
- of estimated YouTube spend across 483 advertisers
- $463.8Mof estimated YouTube spend across 483 advertisersFilament market sample
- waste share of classified impressions, day 0 to day 28+
- 34% to 4%waste share of classified impressions, day 0 to day 28+50 exclusion campaigns, 154M impressions
Six chapters, one argument.
- 01
What counts as waste
Off-site Google Video Partner delivery, made-for-kids, made-for-advertising, off-language and muted autoplay placements, defined before anything is sized.
- 02
The defaults that cause it
GVP switched on by default, campaign types that could not switch it off, and verification that cannot see the placements it is paid to check.
- 03
Sizing the leak
A transparent model on $40.4B of 2025 YouTube ad revenue, with 12%, 20% and 24% scenarios and the formula for each.
- 04
Filament's market sample
Where the money goes across 483 advertisers, and how much of it sits in the long tail of small channels.
- 05
What humans catch that automation misses
Context, discernment and the long tail of new junk that a classifier has not seen yet.
- 06
See, clean, learn, improve
The operating loop for taking waste out of a live YouTube account, and what changes in the first 28 days.