Watching videos is about to become a little more irritating, and both viewers and creators aren't happy
Is there a single person on this planet who doesn't roll their eyes when they're unable to skip a long ad before watching a video on YouTube?
Probably not...
Well, cue a hell of a lot more eye rolling! Because there's a new change coming to the popular video viewing service, and it's set to irritate.
The change will force users to sit through video ads of up to 15-20 seconds when watching clips from all sorts of content creators. That’s up to four times longer than the current five second viewing time for the company’s more typical ads that can be skipped.
As it stands, not all creators are able to use non-skippable ads in front of their videos.
A YouTube spokesperson explained the difference in video announcing the change:
“We have the type that viewers can skip, which you probably see a lot. There’s another kind that viewers can’t skip,” he said.
“The [change] is the ability to turn on non-skippable ads for your videos. In the past it’s been something that’s only been available to a select few partners.”
“In about a week from now we’re going to start rolling it out to everyone who’s in the YouTube partner program.
“The number one reason is more money. Non-skippable ads tend to make more money because generally advertisers are willing to pay a bit more for them.”
While the company said the option for non-skippable ads would put more money in the pockets of video makers, in the comments section many creators were quick to challenge the claim, suggesting the longer ads turned people away.
“I experimented with non-skippable ads — I did this for close to three months, each week I saw my ad revenue go down, down, down,” said one user. “So I switched back to skippable ads. I saw my revenue go up almost immediately.”
Another said people would likely find a way to circumvent any growth in longer ads.
“Non-skippable ads are unlikely to make us more money. It will simply drive more people to use AdBlock and we will end up making less money. I don’t see this as a good idea,” they said.
