Watching YouTube on your TV will be more frustrating if you don’t pay to avoid ads. As announced in YouTube Brandcast event on Wednesday, YouTube will soon add 30-second non-skippable ads to top-performing content watched on connected TVs.
YouTube says viewers will see a single 30-second ad instead of two consecutive 15-second ads, but that doesn’t mean those shorter ads will disappear entirely. The 30-second ads will be available to advertisers via YouTube Select, a curated advertising platform that targets the top five percent of YouTube content. YouTube says 70 percent of YouTube Select impressions come from TVs, making it the perfect platform for longer ads.
YouTube is also testing ads that will appear on paused videos
“More and more, viewers are tuning into YouTube on the biggest screen in their home,” YouTube CEO Neal Mohan said during the Brandcast event (seen via Different). “Viewers – especially younger viewers – no longer make a distinction 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-pause feature that Hulu launched a few years ago, and it’s called YouTube’s “pause experiences.” Judging by the photo example published by AdWeekYouTube pause ads appear as a banner around the video and can be removed by selecting the “dismiss” button.
YouTube hasn’t said when any of these changes — 30-second non-skippable ads and pause ads — will roll out, but we’ve reached out for details and will update if we hear back.
Yesterday’s announcements follow a recent crackdown on the video hosting platform’s ad blockers. Last week, YouTube announced that it was experimenting with pop-up messages that says “Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube,” encouraging viewers to subscribe to YouTube Premium for an ad-free experience.