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Google’s YouTube plays a video ad before playing the actual video. This is not something new — we all have seen video ads running within the YouTube player before. But this time, the ads are just too aggressive.
On most of the YouTube videos, you will notice there’s no way to click “Skip ads“ and proceed to watch the video. You are now forced to select an advertisement, watch the commercial completely, and then watch the actual video. But there’s more: users are now given the ability to either select one long commercial break or go with multiple breaks, like this:
If you look closely at the image above, you will notice the first ad is 1:44 minute long. That’s a pretty long video commercial break given the fact that the actual video was about 5-minute long.
Not all the YouTube clips run these video ads. Some of the longer YouTube videos have only one ad, and sometimes none. But this is just a start — we don’t know what YouTube will bring to the table in the near future. Probably paid videos? Wait, we already have such premium videos on YouTube.
Needless to say, these video ads cannot be blocked. The old trick to skip videos ads by reloading the webpage no longer works. YouTube is also pushing regional language ads on videos I frequent.
There’s also no way to pause these video ads.
I am not against these ads, but whenever I don’t feel like watching them, I simply mute the sound and let the ad run.