YouTube's War On Ad Blockers Continues, Now Making Ads Truly Unskippable

🌈 Abstract

The article discusses YouTube's efforts to counter the use of ad-blocker extensions on its platform. It describes how YouTube is now serving blank ads or black screens to users who have ad-blockers enabled, forcing them to wait for a certain duration before being able to view the actual video content. This is part of YouTube's push to get users to subscribe to YouTube Premium, which offers an ad-free experience.

🙋 Q&A

[01] YouTube's Efforts to Counter Ad-Blockers

1. What changes has YouTube made to stop users from skipping advertisements via third-party ad blocker extensions?

• YouTube has made changes to serve blank ads or black screens to users with ad-blockers enabled, forcing them to wait for a certain duration before being able to view the actual video content.
• YouTube has also started testing server-side ad injection, where the ads are inserted directly into the main YouTube video feed, making it more difficult for ad blockers to identify and block the ads.

2. What is YouTube's motivation behind these changes?

• Advertisements on the platform are a major source of revenue for YouTube and its creators.
• YouTube wants to push users to subscribe to YouTube Premium, which offers an ad-free experience, as a way to generate revenue and reduce the impact of ad-blockers.

3. How successful has YouTube Premium been so far?

• YouTube Premium has been a success, crossing 100 million paying subscribers earlier this year.

4. What are the implications of YouTube's server-side ad injection for ad-blocker users?

• With server-side ad injection, ad blockers can no longer see two separate pieces of media (the ad and the video content). The ad is now inserted directly into the main video feed, making it more difficult for ad blockers to block the ads.
• As a result, ad-blocker users are now seeing blank ads or black screens before the actual video content, as they can no longer skip the ads.

[02] Impact on Ad-Blocker Users

1. How are ad-blocker users being affected by YouTube's changes?

• Ad-blocker users are now being forced to wait for 6 to 30 seconds before being able to view the actual video content, as they are being served with blank ads or black screens.
• This partially defeats the purpose of using an ad-blocker, as users still have to wait for the ads to play out.

2. What are the options for ad-blocker users to avoid these issues?

• The only way to have a truly ad-free YouTube experience is to subscribe to YouTube Premium.
• Ad-blocker users may have to wait for the ad-blocker developers to find new workarounds, but YouTube's server-side ad injection makes this more difficult.