YouTube is experimenting with showing ads when you pause a video

[Shawn Knight]

Facepalm: YouTube may soon give viewers another reason to sign up for the company's ad-free subscription service, or infuriate them enough to stop watching altogether. During its Brandcast conference in the spring of 2023, YouTube spoke of a new "pause ads" initiative for smart TVs. As the name suggests, these are ads that will play mid-stream when a user has paused the content they are watching. As the Times of India explains, your paused video will shrink to make room for an ad.

Philipp Schindler, Google SVP and chief business officer, said during the company's most recent earnings call that early testing in Q1 exhibited "strong traction." The executive added that pause ads are "commanding premium pricing from advertisers" and "driving strong brand lift results," likely suggesting a wider rollout could be just around the bend.

YouTube attempted to spin the "non-interruptive" ad format as less of a nuisance than traditional ads, but not everyone is buying it. When I pause a show, it is often to answer a call or talk to someone that has just entered the room. The last thing I want in a situation like that is an unexpected commercial that could prompt me to take additional action. Do pause ads play audio and / or video? Will I have to pause them, or just press the mute button?

What about pause ads that play when I leave the room to grab a snack or use the restroom, no harm in those right? In that scenario, the ad is a total waste as nobody is consuming its message. Sure, YouTube is making its ad revenue but advertisers are not going to stick with that lossy model for very long.

It will be interesting to see if and how ad blockers cope with YouTube's pause ads. Google has been going back and forth with ad blocker providers for the better part of the last year and with this new initiative on the horizon, it is unlikely that either side will back down anytime soon.

Image credit: CardMapr

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YouTube is experimenting with showing ads when you pause a video

 

[The Talking Tech]

Reason enough for someone to come up with a far better alternative.

So many billionaires out there and no one can't really come up with any better alternative to YouTube?

 

[m4a4]

I expect that uBlock will also take care of those effortlessly.

But at least it won't be a full-video ad. However, there's a good chance that if I'm pausing, it's because I want to see something, so no chance I'm dealing with that (even if it still shows the full video frame).

 

[winjer]

And then Google wonders why so many people are switching to use ad blockers.

 

[kira setsu]

Youtube and pretty much all of these video or social apps sound more and more like hellscapes each and every day.

 

[yRaz]

Youtube has created this chain reaction of "more people are using ad blockers, we need to increase the amount of ads" and it has snowballed to the point of making the news. I don't think youtube has ever been profitable because the infustructure needed for this level of video streaming is insane. That said, all they did with their heavy push into ads is introduce people into the magical world of adblockers. Now that consumers have taken the adblocker red pill they are never going back. I'd be fine with a 480p free teir, ad supported 720 with a $5/m 1080 teir. I see many youtube videos that are upscaled to 4k, not down sampled to 1080p so I wouldn't really care if they just got rid of 4k completely.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Enshitification must advance at all costs!

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Youtube has created this chain reaction of "more people are using ad blockers, we need to increase the amount of ads" and it has snowballed to the point of making the news. I don't think youtube has ever been profitable because the infustructure needed for this level of video streaming is insane. That said, all they did with their heavy push into ads is introduce people into the magical world of adblockers. Now that consumers have taken the adblocker red pill they are never going back. I'd be fine with a 480p free teir, ad supported 720 with a $5/m 1080 teir. I see many youtube videos that are upscaled to 4k, not down sampled to 1080p so I wouldn't really care if they just got rid of 4k completely.

Google's making record profits. Youtube's revenue isnt an issue.

Enshitification must advance at all costs!

But to what end?

 

[GodisanAtheist]

But to what end?

-To make something profitable.

The whole point of enshitification is that its an outgrowth of silicon valley venture capital mindset: make something awesome but not profitable using venture capital money, cash out to work on some other fun project. The product here is a company that can be sold to a bigger company.

Now the new business owners left holding the bag have to 80's MBA this thing that they bought that people love but is hemorrhaging money into profitability somehow. The quality gets worse, the intrusive monetization grows, and either the thing becomes a profitable shadow of its former self or all the users leave and it collapses and the cycle begins again.

Enshitification in a nutshell.

 

[yRaz]

Google's making record profits. Youtube's revenue isnt an issue.

Businesses frequently shut down the parts of their businesses or modify their business model to get rid of parts of the company that isn't profitable. Google originally bought youtube in a venture capital fashion. During the whole net neutrality debate people were worried that google would be forced to youtube and it would go out of business because there isn't really a way to may a free streaming site profitable.

This is the only time you'll see me say something good about Google and I just want to thank them for running youtube at a loss as it costs billions a year

 

[wiyosaya]

I have yet to see them block me for using uBlock.

I expect that uBlock will also take care of those effortlessly.

Agreed!

 

[Dimitrios]

For the love of god, please do something about the bots.

 

[Primey]

https://github.com/yuliskov/SmartTube

Solved. Zero ads on smart TVs

 

[TheBigT42]

YouTube Ads have gotten so bad I can barely watch in the living room on my Roku. I am about to exclusively watch on my PC with UBlock

 

[BabaYaga]

Youtube app is unwatchable on AppleTV. I wish there was a built in browser on AppleTV. I have to stream from my Ipad if I want to watch Youtube. No one has time to sit through even 30sec of ads every few minutes. It must work though as companies throw money at Google to show their ads.

 

[brucek]

I'd like to hear from a "Pause Ad" buyer and why they think it's worth a premium. Like others said, for me I pause when my attention is temporarily unavailable, such as a phone call, trip to the restroom, or dealing with a household incident. If my TV insisted on continuing to make noise in that scenario I'd either turn it off (if just a monitor) or at least mute it. To the extent I saw anything about a brand in those circumstances it would not improve my perception of that brand.

 

[wiak]

When I pause a video, I want it to stay quiet and paused, I also hate the **** out any restrictions to audio, so that you cannot MUTE the fcking audio! (luckly I use external speakers with Infrared), some streaming services like pluto.tv does that

 

[Hotlynx16]

Something is going on either with YouTube or spectrum(my internet provider)! I have 374.64Mbp Download but when I am watching a live stream on YouTube (Firefox Browser) I get dropouts that cause Firefox to go to the buffering circle and I have to refresh the page to get the video going again! It Does it on a different computer,in Chrome also. Bought a new router, still does it! I have to lower the resolution to 240p to keep the video from stopping in Firefox. The only browser it doesn't do it on is Edge Even turning off my ad blocker doesn't help!! Edge maybe able to recover from the dropout better. The dropouts only seem to last a couple of seconds! Anyone have any Ideas??

 

[Starfals]

As a youtube person myself, that makes videos and all.. I honestly think this is horrible. So many people pause videos to read the in game letters. Many people, myself included make these in game segments around 5 sec longs, instead of the typical... 10m (we can't all read fast, can we? ;p) So you can pause and read them. If ads starts flying around while you are in the moment and try to read more of the story... lol. That would ruin the flow of the video. I honestly prefer ads before the video starts. Even ones in the middle can be annoying and disturbing.

No wonder people get blockers, I honestly can't blame them. Whats next? People gotta see an ad before they post a comment? Before they click the like button? Its getting out of hand.

 

[kiwigraeme]

No ones is going to created a YT competitor at the moment , too much content already media vs hardware/software dilemma.

Maybe in future if storage becomes super cheap, we can bypass with a decentralised system like torrents, independant of big corps

 

[brucek]

Something is going on either with YouTube or spectrum(my internet provider)! I have 374.64Mbp Download but when I am watching a live stream on YouTube (Firefox Browser) I get dropouts that cause Firefox to go to the buffering circle and I have to refresh the page to get the video going again! It Does it on a different computer,in Chrome also. Bought a new router, still does it! I have to lower the resolution to 240p to keep the video from stopping in Firefox. The only browser it doesn't do it on is Edge Even turning off my ad blocker doesn't help!! Edge maybe able to recover from the dropout better. The dropouts only seem to last a couple of seconds! Anyone have any Ideas??

Does this apply to all YouTube videos, or specifically just all livestreams, or specially to one particular live streamer? There's probably a clue in that.

Edge does have exclusive access to a video playback process for certain protected content, which is why for example if everything else is right too Netflix will stream in higher than 1080p to Edge but not to the other two browsers. That doesn't sound like what's going on in your situation though.

Is it possible the browsers are configured differently for maybe using a VPN, or using different DNS servers, or using hardware video decoding? If so that could make a difference.

Otherwise I'm not sure what's going on, it's not something I've seen myself.

 

[pcnthuziast]

Youtube is doodoo. A much better model is possible and inevitable.

 

[mbk34]

I wouldn't mind it showing ads when the screen is paused if they were the only ads I have to suffer. Instead I have ads before a video begins, then ads from the "creator" to pay for his time, then adds from youtube figuring that I've watched for so long that I must be ready for yet more adds, then I'll get a couple of mins of actual content, then we're back to youtube ads again. If I'm not carefully watching the time bar then I sometimes get caught by the ending ad too.

Do advertisers really feel that their ads are being watched by anyone? today the algorithm seems to have decided to show me ads for max size tampons to improve my sleep??? No doubt if it works out my age then I'll be force fed ads for retirement homes, stair lifts and cheap funerals. Thank god youtube doesn't do funerals otherwise there'd be a screen on the inside of the coffin force feeding ads to the occupant.

 

[Rudyduu]

Reason enough for someone to come up with a far better alternative.

So many billionaires out there and no one can't really come up with any better alternative to YouTube?

How would you pay for all the hosting, customer services, and software development?

 

[Rudyduu]

I wouldn't mind it showing ads when the screen is paused if they were the only ads I have to suffer. Instead I have ads before a video begins, then ads from the "creator" to pay for his time, then adds from youtube figuring that I've watched for so long that I must be ready for yet more adds, then I'll get a couple of mins of actual content, then we're back to youtube ads again. If I'm not carefully watching the time bar then I sometimes get caught by the ending ad too.

Do advertisers really feel that their ads are being watched by anyone? today the algorithm seems to have decided to show me ads for max size tampons to improve my sleep??? No doubt if it works out my age then I'll be force fed ads for retirement homes, stair lifts and cheap funerals. Thank god youtube doesn't do funerals otherwise there'd be a screen on the inside of the coffin force feeding ads to the occupant.

I just pay for premium, and I never have to worry about ads, the platform and the creators have to make a profit somehow. Too many people complain about adverts, but without them the platform wouldn't exist. Ads from the creator directly support the creator and it's unfair to complain about it since you are only paying for the content with your time and nothing else.