YouTube has confirmed that it will roll out paused ads on its platform

In a recent article by The Verge, Oluwa Falodun, YouTube's communications manager, stated that the company “decided to roll out pause ads widely to all advertisers due to strong response from both advertisers and viewers” Apparently, this means that these ads will be less intrusive for viewers Sadly, there was no mention of whether this means less other ads on the site

Google has been playing with this feature for some time now; in a recent experiment reported by Android Authority, Google's Philip Schindler said that the company has seen a positive response to the feature and that “when users pause organic content a new, unobtrusive ad format that appears when users pause organic content” Meanwhile, Reddit users reported that paused ads are now appearing more frequently on smart TVs and even on some users' YouTube mobile apps

YouTube and Google have been working for years to improve the way ads are displayed to consumers This includes showing longer ads more frequently, adding multiple ads to videos, and adding ads that cannot be skipped This has all been combined with a constant battle with ad blockers, forcing users with such features installed to skip video sections, and so on However, YouTube has made it clear that this is not best targeted at ad blocker users

While more ads are a hassle, the obvious answer is to sign up for YouTube Premium: $1399 / £12 / $3299 AUD is not cheap, but the benefits are pretty good They include ad-free viewing, offline viewing, and background playback YouTube Premium also offers access to YouTube Music, and two new AI features were recently announced

YouTube is following in the footsteps of services like Hulu and AT&T TV that use paused ads, and there appears to be no escape