If you’re an avid consumer of YouTube, you probably know how the platform is flooded with advertisements. The ads started way back in 2007 as an experiment, and in 2008, YouTube introduced the preroll ads. The advertisement is what moves the platform forward in terms of revenue, and allows the company to pay content creators. However, over the years, the platform has greatly increased the amount of ads shown in videos. There are ads shown at the beginning of a video, and depending on its duration, you can face more.
There are also non-skippable ads, that for some users, are really annoying. The official way YouTube provides for an ad-free experience is through the YouTube Premium subscription. However, some users have been relying only on ad blockers to prevent these ads from popping out. This is a practice that the firm began to crack down earlier this year as an experiment. Now, it’s a global effort to push users through its premium subscription.
YouTube Begins Global Effort Against Ad Blockers
Back in June this year, YouTube announce it was running a “small experiment” globally where it urged a tiny subset of people using ad blockers to disable them. Some users started to notice YouTube’s push agains ad blockers during this month, and now the company published a statement. This is no longer a “small experiment”. YouTube now says it’s launching a global effort to crack down on ad blockers and encourage users to either allow ads or pay for YouTube Premium.
The information has been confirmed by YouTube communications manager Christopher Lawton. When you run into YouTube’s ad blocker block, you will see a screenshot requiring you to disable the ad blocker if you plan to keep using the platform. The message says “Video playback is blocked unless YouTube ads are allowed or the ad blocker is disabled”.
Right now, there are two official choices: Allowing ads on YouTube, or trying YouTube Premium. The company has been gradually increasing its efforts, and now is being more aggressive in its push against ad blockers. As per Lawton, using ad blockers violates the platform’s terms of service. “Ads support a diverse ecosystem of creators globally and allow billions to access their favorite content on YouTube”.
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YouTube’s inclusion of ads
The company first ad was aired in August 2007. Among the first advertisers were Fox, The Simpsons Movie, BMW, and Hairspray. Another early advertiser was Cingular Wireless, who has since been obught by AT&T.
The mission to monetize ads began in August 2006 with the launch of both Participatory Video Ads, and Brand Channels. The InVideo Ads, also known as overlays, followed in August 2007, along with the YouTube Partner Program in December that same year.
According to Eileen Naughton, director of media and platforms, YouTube tested numerous advertising formats. The “TV-style” animated overlay, which covers the bottom 20% of a video was the preferred ad format. The overlay was “80% transparent” and will run for around 10 seconds. The ad appeared after 15 seconds of viewing the video clip.
Since then, the platform launched analytics tool YouTube Insights, the e-commerce platform Click-to-Buy, Promoted Videos, and Pre-Roll ads. The latter are the ads that we all got familiar, since they tend to play at the start of almost every video you start in the platform. The company also extended its homepage ads options from one to seven formats. It addded Individual Video Partnerships, Began testing skippable pre-roll test, launched Video Targeting, and began running YouTube mobile ads. For some the mobile ads are the most intrusive, and make the experience really annoying unless you pay for YouTube Premium.
Conclusion
Of Course, the groups behind some ad blockers won’t stay dormant on the crack down. They will look for alternatives, and YouTube will keep running after them. For the next months, we will see a cat & rat quest, until one of the parts is beaten. The more advanced users will start looking for alternative ways to keep watching videos without ads. However, for the basic users, the best way to get a ad-free experience will be paying for a YouTube Premium subscription. The ad-free experience is just one of the benefits in the subscription, it also gives you access to YouTube Music and other exclusive perks like downloading videos to watch later.
