Is nothing sacred? YouTube is now rolling out “Pause ads” that encroach on the right-hand side of paused videos. These pause-screen ads, while less interruptive than traditional advertisements, do not appear to reduce the volume of ads on YouTube’s platform.
Pause-screen ads first launched in a limited pilot program late last year. They were only shown to a handful of users, and contemporaneous reports indicate that the new ad-delivery system was restricted to smart TVs.
We began seeing a wider rollout of pause-screen ads earlier this month. Still, the ads only appeared on smart TVs. That appears to have changed—viewers are now flocking to Reddit to complain of pause-screen ads on the YouTube mobile app, and Google boasts that the year-old pilot program was a resounding success.
“As we’ve seen both strong advertiser and strong viewer response, we’ve since widely rolled out Pause ads to all advertisers.” –
If you pause a full-screen video on a smart TV, smartphone, or tablet, the video will shrink to accommodate a pause-screen ad window on the right-hand side of your screen. This ad window covers the description and comments section when you aren’t in full screen. However, you can dismiss pause-screen ads without resuming your video, and the ads are totally static—they don’t contain audio or anything like that; they’re just still images.
These ads are annoying. They encroach on the video feed and make it harder to read on-screen conten when pausing (it’s a bad day for video essay addicts). And, more importantly, the new ad system does not appear to reduce the frequency of normal advertisements on the YouTube platform. YouTube won’t reward you for staring at a Dunkin’ Donuts pause-screen banner. More ads, more ads.
It may be a few days or weeks before you encounter any pause-screen ads, as the rollout appears to be quite slow. These ads are also limited to smart TV and mobile devices, meaning that you won’t see them when streaming YouTube in your web browser (not yet, at least). YouTube Premium, which costs $13.99 a month, is the only officially sanctioned means of eliminating these and other ads.
Source: Google via The Verge