YouTube Sponsor Segment Detector

Detect sponsor segments, promo codes, and brand deals in any YouTube video. For each video you get the exact start and end time of every paid read and self-promotion, with community vote scores, plus the discount codes, percentages, and sponsor links pulled straight from the description — all in clean structured JSON.

Why use this actor

• No account, no login, no API key required — just paste video URLs or a channel and hit Run.
• Exact ad timestamps — know precisely where each sponsor read starts and ends (down to the second), so you can measure ad load, skip past it, or audit brand placements.
• Promo codes and discounts, extracted for you — the description is scanned for coupon codes (e.g. LTT), percentage discounts (e.g. 15% off), and every sponsor link with its brand domain.
• Community-verified quality — each segment carries an up/down vote score and a "locked" flag so you can trust the well-reviewed ones and filter out noise.
• Analyze one video, a list, or a whole channel — point it at a channel and it pulls the most recent uploads automatically.
• Stable JSON output suitable for pipelines, spreadsheets, and databases — every row carries _input, _source, and _scrapedAt fields so you can join results back to your input.
• Automatic retries; export to JSON, CSV, or Excel.

How it works

1. You provide a list of YouTube videos (IDs or URLs) and/or a channel, and choose which segment types to detect (sponsor, self-promotion, intro, outro, and more).
2. For each video the actor looks up the known ad and promotional segments contributed by the viewer community, then reads the video's public details — title, channel, view count, publish date, and description.
3. The description is scanned for promo codes, discount percentages, and sponsor links.
4. Optionally, it can attach the words spoken during each sponsor read (from the video's captions) and a best-guess brand name.
5. Results stream into your dataset, one clean row per video, ready to download.

You do not need to manage scrapers, browsers, or blocks — it is all handled internally.

Input

{
  "videoUrls": [
    "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S82W3hWDvZA",
    "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xN7ndof4Xc"
  ],
  "channelUrl": "",
  "maxVideos": 10,
  "categories": ["sponsor", "selfpromo"],
  "includeTranscriptMatch": false,
  "usePrivacyHash": false,
  "maxItems": 100,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true,
    "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"]
  }
}

Field	Type	Description
videoUrls	array	Videos to analyze. Accepts 11-character IDs, watch URLs, youtu.be/... short links, and Shorts URLs.
channelUrl	string	Optional. Analyze a channel's most recent uploads. Accepts a handle (@LinusTechTips), channel URL, or channel ID (UC...).
maxVideos	integer	When a channel is given, how many recent uploads to analyze (default 10).
categories	array	Which segment types to detect: sponsor, selfpromo, interaction, intro, outro, music_offtopic, filler. Default ["sponsor", "selfpromo"].
includeTranscriptMatch	boolean	Attach the spoken words for each sponsor / self-promotion segment plus a best-guess brand. Default false.
usePrivacyHash	boolean	Look up segments without sending the full video ID. Same results, slightly slower. Default false.
maxItems	integer	Maximum number of videos to output across all inputs (default 100).
proxyConfiguration	object	Apify Proxy settings. Residential is recommended.

Output

One row per video. A video with no known segments is still returned (with an empty segments list) so you can see it was checked.

{
  "_input": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S82W3hWDvZA",
  "_source": "sponsorblock+innertube-ios",
  "_scrapedAt": "2026-07-10T19:33:12Z",
  "videoId": "S82W3hWDvZA",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S82W3hWDvZA",
  "title": "I Hate These...",
  "channelName": "Linus Tech Tips",
  "channelId": "UCXuqSBlHAE6Xw-yeJA0Tunw",
  "viewCount": "1268127",
  "publishDate": "2026-07-06T09:53:00-07:00",
  "uploadDate": "2026-07-06T09:53:00-07:00",
  "category": "Science & Technology",
  "lengthSeconds": "1481",
  "segments": [
    {
      "category": "sponsor",
      "actionType": "skip",
      "startSec": 133.196,
      "endSec": 150.681,
      "durationSec": 17.485,
      "votes": 17,
      "locked": 1,
      "UUID": "de0a2ea01dcf3b43ff4ec9fa94d64843959d728c96be0ecfb587060fa784398a7",
      "videoDuration": 1480.69
    },
    {
      "category": "intro",
      "actionType": "skip",
      "startSec": 150.481,
      "endSec": 159.765,
      "durationSec": 9.284,
      "votes": 7,
      "locked": 1,
      "UUID": "4de1f1defc133c347403e9f238f39bb08d7d13abb402ff7f89ef4f7b55d894007",
      "videoDuration": 1480.69
    },
    "... 12 more"
  ],
  "sponsorCount": 6,
  "sponsorSecondsTotal": 101.09,
  "description": {
    "promoCodes": ["LTT"],
    "discountPct": [15],
    "sponsorUrls": [
      { "url": "https://saily.com/ltt", "brandHost": "saily.com" },
      { "url": "https://geni.us/1et77", "brandHost": "geni.us" },
      "... 15 more"
    ]
  }
}

Field	Type	Description
videoId	string	The 11-character YouTube video ID.
url	string	Canonical watch URL.
title	string	Video title.
channelName	string	Channel / uploader name.
channelId	string	Channel ID (UC...).
viewCount	string	View count at the moment of scraping.
publishDate / uploadDate	string	Publish and upload dates.
category	string	YouTube category (e.g. "Science & Technology").
lengthSeconds	string	Video length in seconds.
segments	array	Detected segments (see below). Empty when the video has none.
sponsorCount	integer	Number of sponsor + self-promotion segments.
sponsorSecondsTotal	number	Total seconds of sponsor + self-promotion content.
description	object	Extracted promoCodes, discountPct, and sponsorUrls ({url, brandHost}).

Each item in segments:

Field	Type	Description
category	string	sponsor, selfpromo, intro, outro, filler, etc.
actionType	string	Recommended handling: skip, mute, full, or poi (point of interest).
startSec / endSec	number	Segment start and end, in seconds.
durationSec	number	Segment length in seconds.
votes	integer	Community vote score (higher = more trusted; negative = disputed).
locked	integer	1 if the segment is locked by a moderator.
UUID	string	Stable identifier for the segment.
videoDuration	number	Video length the segment was recorded against (may be omitted when unknown).
spokenText	string	(Only with includeTranscriptMatch) words spoken during the segment.
matchedBrand	string	(Only with includeTranscriptMatch) best-guess brand mentioned.

Notes / limits

• Coverage. Segment data comes from SponsorBlock, a community project where viewers submit ad and promotional timestamps. Popular creators (tech reviewers, large channels) have excellent coverage; a smaller or very new video may have no segments yet — it is returned with an empty segments list, not an error.
• Vote scores. Prefer segments with positive votes and locked: 1 for the most reliable results. Negative votes indicate a disputed submission.
• Promo codes. Codes and discounts are read from the description text; a video whose sponsor mentions the code only out loud (not in the description) will have an empty promoCodes list.
• Spoken text. includeTranscriptMatch depends on the video having retrievable captions; when captions are unavailable, spokenText is left empty. Residential proxy improves availability.
• Proxy. Residential proxy is recommended because YouTube rate-limits datacenter networks.

Other actors

Actor	What it does
YouTube Video Detail Scraper	Full metadata for any video.
YouTube Channel Scraper	Channel stats: subscribers, video count, verified status.
YouTube Transcripts Scraper	Full timed transcript / captions for a video.