Watching YouTube on your TV becomes more frustrating if you don’t pay to remove ads. As announced in the YouTube Brand Streaming Wednesday’s event, YouTube will soon add non-skippable 30-second ads to top-performing content viewed on connected TVs.
YouTube says viewers will see a single 30-second ad instead of two consecutive 15-second ads, though that doesn’t mean those shorter ads will disappear entirely. The 30-second ads will be available to advertisers through YouTube Selection, a curated advertising platform that targets the top five percent of YouTube content. YouTube claims that 70 percent of YouTube Select’s impressions come from TVs, making it the ideal platform for longer ads.
YouTube is also testing ads that will appear on paused videos.
“Increasingly, viewers are tuning in to YouTube on the biggest screen in their home,” YouTube CEO Neal Mohan said during the Brandcast event (seen via Variety). “Viewers, especially younger ones, no longer distinguish between the type of content they watch.”
YouTube also announced that it will begin testing ads that appear when a viewer pauses a video on a connected TV. It’s similar to the ad-pausing feature implemented by Hulu a few years ago, and has been dubbed “pausing experiences” by YouTube. Judging by the example image posted by ad weekYouTube pause ads will appear as a banner around the video and can be removed by selecting the “dismiss” button.
YouTube hasn’t mentioned when any of these changes (non-skippable 30-second ads and pause ads) will be implemented, but we’ve reached out for details and will update if we hear back.
Yesterday’s announcements follow a recent crackdown on ad blockers by the video hosting platform. Last week, YouTube revealed that it is experimenting with popup messages that say “Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube”, encouraging viewers to subscribe to YouTube Premium for an ad-free experience.
