If you don’t pay to skip ads, watching YouTube on your TV will soon be more annoying. YouTube announced Wednesday that it will add unskippable 30-second ads to the top-performing videos watched on connected televisions.
YouTube has announced that viewers will only see one 30-second ad, instead of two 15-second ones. However, this does not mean the shorter ads are going to disappear. YouTube select is a curated platform for advertising that targets YouTube’s top five percent. 30-second ads are available to advertisers. YouTube says that 70 percent of YouTube Select’s impressions are from TVs. This makes it an ideal platform for long ads.
YouTube has also begun testing ads that appear when videos are paused.
YouTube CEO Neal Mohan said during the Brandcast that “more and more viewers are tuning in to YouTube on their biggest screen at home.” “Viewers, especially younger viewers, no longer distinguish between the type of content they are watching.”
YouTube has also announced it will begin testing ads that show up when a viewer pauses video on an connected TV. YouTube has dubbed it “pause experiences”. It is similar to Hulu’s pause ads that were introduced a few years ago. According to the adWeek example image, YouTube’s ads that pause will appear in a banner surrounding the video. You can remove them by clicking the “dismiss button.”Although the paused video is reduced to accommodate the banner style pause ads, they can still be dismissed.
YouTube has not announced when these changes will take place — 30-second ads that can’t be skipped and paused ads — but we have reached out to get more information and will update this post if we receive a response.
The announcements made yesterday follow a recent crackdown by YouTube on ad-blockers. YouTube announced last week that it is testing pop-up messages which state that “Ad Blockers are not allowed” and encourage viewers to subscribe to YouTube Premium instead for an ad free experience.
