YouTube could roll out ads while videos are paused after “strong traction” in experiment
Unsplash: @vmxhuYouTube has been testing a new way to show you ads that appear when you pause your video, and it could be coming to a screen near you soon.
YouTube is at war against ad-blockers, and is simultaneously testing different ways to show ads to non-Premium subscribers. The company wants to expand its ad presence during video playback.
During Alphabet’s Q1 2024 earnings call, Philipp Schindler, a Senior Vice President at Google, shared results about an ad experiment they’ve been running on YouTube.
“In Q1, we saw strong traction from the introduction of a Pause Ads pilot on connected TVs. This is a new non-interruptive ad format that appears when users pause their organic content. Initial results show that Pause Ads are driving strong brand lift results and are commanding attention.”
Schindler didn’t say when the pause ads will hit your devices, but if Google execs are happy with them, don’t be surprised if they start popping up soon.
YouTube started testing pause ads last year, as reported by Adweek. These ads will pop up as banners around the video and can be removed by hitting the “dismiss” button. They’re going to be pretty similar to the pause ads that Hulu introduced back in 2019.
The news comes after YouTube cracked down on third-party ad-blockers earlier this week, cautioning that “Viewers who are using these third-party apps may experience buffering issues or see the error ‘The following content is not available on this app’ when trying to watch a video.”