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I have noticed something unusual – and quite frankly annoying – with my YouTube recommendations, since more or less a week ago. Every now and then, when I'm watching a YT video on my desktop, no matter which kind, one of the recommendations will be a promotional video from an obscure corporate channel, with barely any views at all. Specifically, it always seems to be the 3rd recommended video from the top of the page. It seems to happen too often, and with too many constants, to just be a fluke. Worst-case scenario, this could be something wanted by YouTube in their algorithm. Wouldn't even be the worst case of ad-forcefeeding they ever pushed upon us. Has anyone else here experimented that?

I've noticed something like that happening a few times over the last couple years. The algorithm suddenly starts pushing very small channels with barely any views (usually less than 200-300 views), does that sometimes for a few days or weeks, then stops. It happened to me again recently, that might be what you're experiencing.

While I wouldn't rule out ad shenanigans, at least in my experience they don't seem to be corporate channels, what I get recommended appear to be mostly small let's play channels or Vtubers.

Come to think of it, i think i remember some people i share a discord with mentioning something akin to this. I haven't really noticed myself because i don't pay much attention to the view counts on recommendations

Noticed this on mobile

Oh I've noticed too. Its been a thing for a month and half-ish for me maybe? I ignore it usually.

Adblocks and third-party programs haven't caused that issue for me. I do experience "Feed Bleed" (oc phase no steal!). Friends and family who visit my house connect to my wifi and acquire my public IP, so I see their recommendations in my feed. My coworker is a /k/ommando, therefore Kentucky ballistics will come in my feed even though I never hunt or particularly like guns. My brother watches farm sim lets play, and guess what appears in my feed. And so on. It also happens in reverse, so I apologize to friends and family for Big boobed anime clips. The more scarier situations is when no wifi sharing occurs and its the devices listing for key words. Or that can be attributed to coincidence.
Though it's happen more than once…. if I had a nickel.jpg

On somewhat a similar vain I do remember my coworker friend being absolutely bombarded with bhphoto ads on YouTube after looking at a monitor on their site. Every clip at work he watch during break the echos of that f*ing ad would echo through the room pre-video.

This is far from new and has been happening for a few years already.

Though Youtube always had problems with recommendations. It's just that some problems have been replaced with others.