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YouTube is introducing unskippable ads to TV

Watching ad-free videos is about to get more difficult.

Meera Navlakha

on May 18, 2023

Credit: Getty.

YouTube will soon introduce 30-second unskippable advertisements to its TV viewing experience. The company's top-performing videos will incorporate these ads, instead of seeing two 15-second ads consecutively.

CEO Neal Mohan announced the update at Brandcast 2023, saying "more and more, viewers are tuning into YouTube on the biggest screen in their home." In December 2022, 150 million viewers watched YouTube and YouTube TV on televisions in the US. According to the company, YouTube Select – a platform for advertisers to have their content displayed on YouTube – is landing over 70 percent of impressions on the big screen.

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YouTube is also testing "pause experiences" on TV screens, so when a user pauses a video, an ad will appear. This feature is similar to what Hulu rolled out in 2019.

This push on advertising comes after a recent crackdown on ad blockers, which essentially encourages users to pay for the ad-free YouTube Premium.

Topics YouTube

Meera Navlakha

Meera is a journalist based between London and New York. Her work has been published in The New York Times, Vice, The Independent, Vogue India, W Magazine, and others. She was previously a Culture Reporter at Mashable.