YouTube has confirmed that it will be rolling out pause ads on the platform, meaning users will have to sit through even more ads than before.
In a recent article by The Verge, Oluwa Falodun, YouTube's communication manager, stated that the company has "seen both strong advertiser and strong viewer response, we’ve since widely rolled out Pause ads to all advertisers." Apparently, the idea is that these ads will be less intrusive to the viewer. Sadly, there was no mention of if this would mean fewer other ads on the site.
Google has been playing with the feature for a while now. A recent experiment, reported by Android Authority, had Google's Philip Schindler stating that the company was seeing positive responses to the feature, calling it a "new non-interruptive ad format that appears when users pause their organic content." Meanwhile, users on Reddit have reported more frequent pause ads on Smart TVs and even on some users' YouTube mobile apps.
YouTube and Google have been working to improve how they show ads to consumers over the years. These include showing longer ads less frequently, adding several ads to the video and unskippable ads. This is all combined with the company's constant battle against ad blockers, including skipping video sections for any user with such a feature installed. However, YouTube has made it clear that this was not intended to target users of some of the best adblockers.
While more adverts are tedious, the obvious answer is to sign up for YouTube Premium. While $13.99 / £12 / AU$32.99 is not cheap, there are some pretty good perks. These advantages include ad-free viewing, offline viewing and background play. YouTube Premium also offers access to YouTube Music, which recently announced two new AI features.
YouTube is following services like Hulu and AT&T TV making use of pause ads, making it seem like there is no escape.
