YouTube Commercialization

Am I the only woodworker who's noticing that more and more of the woodworking-related videos on YouTube are little more than free ads? Enter a topic in the search string and you're almost sure to find that a very high percentage (and growing!) of the vids are produced by manufacturers and retailers. The videos are either product introductions, product demos, or "teasers" intended to generate interest in some item or instructional DVD.

What's happened on YouTube is similar to what happened on the Web as a whole: what began as a source of "impartial" information has become a very sophisticated marketplace. Sell, sell, sell. However this aggressive marketing is justified, it's still a shame that those of us who are not interested in making purchases have to wade through tons of commercial "plugs" to find the information we want.