YouTube Starts Rolling out ‘Pause Ads’
Credit: Alexander ShatovToggle Dark Mode
Over the past couple of years, Google has been looking for more creative — and annoying — ways to make money off YouTube, and now it’s coming for your pause button.
Over the past few days, several Redditors have reported new “sponsored” ads appearing whenever they pause a video. When paused, the video moves into a smaller block to make space for an advertisement on the right-hand side. A “dismiss” button appears to allow the ad to be cleared, but you have to navigate over to it before you can click it, which means you can’t avoid seeing the ad.
It’s unclear how widely this has rolled out, but it’s likely just the start of something bigger. YouTube announced in May that pause ads were on the way, along with “unskippable” 30-second ads were on the way. The unskippable ads are expected to only appear on what YouTube calls “top-performing content,” where most folks are likelier to run into them.
The pause ads may become more widespread, but the only ad anybody has seen so far is for Dunkin’ Donuts, suggesting it’s a limited rollout until YouTube signs additional advertisers onto the program. A sample image published by AdWeek in May shows a generic placeholder ad for what appears to be a fictitious company (the QR code goes to the YouTube Advertising page).
Unsurprisingly, many folks are less than thrilled about the change. Although it’s fair to say it’s less invasive than slapping ad banners over a video you’re actively watching. At least with pause ads, you only see them when you pause a video, when you’re probably not paying as much attention anyway. Still, many understandably feel it’s the principle of the matter; we’re fast reaching a tipping point in a world where we’re already constantly bombarded by ads.
It’s probably also no coincidence that these changes were announced only a few months after YouTube began cracking down on ad blockers in earnest. However, these two classes of ads appear to be exclusive to connected TVs rather than browsers and mobile apps.
The good news (for now) is that these pause ads don’t seem to have invaded the tvOS YouTube app, so there’s another reason why the Apple TV beats most smart TVs. Of course, that could still change in a future YouTube update.
After all, YouTube hasn’t shown any qualms about imposing its will on Apple TV users. In April, it began hijacking the Apple TV screensaver. That wasn’t necessarily an advertising ploy — the images came from “recommended” scenic videos (when nothing was playing) or thumbnail art from a paused YouTube video. Still, it wasn’t hard to imagine how this could have paved the way for those images to be replaced with ads at some point. At the time, it seemed poised to become the Apple TV version of pause ads.
Thankfully, YouTube walked back that change, although since it did so without comment, it’s hard to know whether it came to its senses or if this is little more than a short-lived reprieve while it retools to show ads instead of pastoral landscapes.
Still, Apple TV users have the benefit of living within Apple’s tightly controlled software ecosystem, which limits the ability of apps like YouTube to exhibit this kind of antisocial behavior outside of their own sandboxes. The YouTube screensavers only appeared while the YouTube app was running. Further, since they were hard coded to start at 4 minutes and 45 seconds, they could easily be prevented by using a shorter screensaver time in your Apple TV settings.
It’s also worth adding that this all goes away if you’re a YouTube Premium subscriber. Some feel that’s what YouTube is pushing for here — annoying viewers enough to make them sign up for Premium. However, if other streaming services like Netflix are any indicator, there’s likely more money to be made from serving ads than from subscriptions, which may also be why YouTube Premium is getting more expensive.
