All this crap works only because YouTube measures only the number of views of a video, and not how many people stop watching it after the first few annoying seconds.
I've heard the same things about Digg, Stumbleupon, Reddit and so on (news.YC?). What I don't get: how do you get a significant number of "friends" on those networks who are willing to watch/read your spam? <p>My real life friends typically don't use social networks and, not being entrepreneuers themselves, they often did not get the point when I asked them to get a stumbleupon account just to rate my site. On the other hand, I could not yet muster the motivation to worm my account onto some other people's friends list just to make them rate my submissions. <p>How do you handle that problem? Perhaps a "entrepreneur helps entrepreneur" network for those things would be in order?
this is exactly the kind of stuff that makes people distrustful of "marketing" messages. Sketchy direct marketers have found their way onto the Internet, and now they're finding their way out of the adsense playground.
I worked in a new media marketing department as an intern for awhile and this is exactly the kind of things they were looking into doing. They wanted to generate buzz by promoting in various online communities as a "community member." Not surprisingly, this is where they had their most success. I fortunately didn't have to participate in the buzz generation but there's no question everyone is looking to do this kind of marketing, whether you like it or not. Marketers will do anything to get eyeballs on their message.