- YouTube ads just got a bit trickier with a new ad format tagged as 'unskippable'.
- The platform is using server-side ad injection where the ad is played as a part of YouTube video.
- This will bypass ad-blockers attempts to thwart ads and reduce their effectivity by a tonne.
YouTube ads are down-right annoying especially when the video streaming platform is cracking down on ad-blockers left and right. To ‘support’ creators, YouTube is going further by using server-side ad injection that plays ads directly into the video stream. These would bypass ad-blockers attempting to thwart an ad altogether.
New YouTube Ads may bypass ad blocker’ radar
According to a Google spokesperson, the video streaming platform is working towards improving both reliability and performance in serving organic and ad video content. With the latest update in mind, users will get to see ads playing as a part of the video bypassing any ad-blocker attempts to eliminate that particular ad. This will surely cause a suboptimal viewing experience for users with ad-blockers installed.
YouTube has indeed been urging its users to either buy YouTube Premium for an ad-free experience or struggle with YouTube ads. A Reddit user exclaimed how they have to view two to three ads before a video starts, ads run during the video, and toward the end as well. This can potentially disrupt a viewer’s experience since YouTube mainly shows ‘unskippable’ ads that could extend 90 seconds if not more.
YouTube has waged war with ad-blockers and has rolled out features to eradicate the use such as by implementing pause ads or skipping videos whenever the platform detects ad-blockers running in the background. Usually, YouTube users client-side ad injection wherein the videos and ads are separate entities wherein ad-blockers can recognize the latter and block them as programmed. With the change to a server-side ad injection method, the video player is essentially combining both video content and ads as one thereby passing ad-blocker’s lenses altogether.
Irrespective of where ads are annoying. You get to see it across social media including Instagram which is testing some forms of ads to generate revenue in the future. YouTube, on the other hand, has focused extensively on getting rid of all ad-blockers prompting users to subscribe to its ad-free YouTube Premium. There may not be much incentive to pay for YouTube when original and worthwhile content is already available elsewhere such as Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, Netflix, etc., which are paid as well.
