Notice when you’re on YouTube you see ads before a video play, and some of them are missing the ‘Skip Ad’ button? You’ll be seeing that button a lot less now, as YouTube is rolling out unskippable ads to every YouTuber out there.
According to a video on YouTube’s own channel, Creator Insider, this feature was previously only available for selected YouTube channels, but now, YouTube is opening the gates for every channel out there. For what it’s worth, the maximum length of an unskippable ad is 20 seconds, which is still four times longer than the five seconds viewers have to wait to skip the ad.
For YouTubers who were previously not eligible to have unskippable ads, all your older videos will have their ads changed to unskippable, and if you want them to be skippable, there’s the option to revert them en masse.
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YouTube’s reasoning behind this is simply that advertisers pay more for unskippable ads than skippable ones. Fair enough, and full-time YouTubers would definitely appreciate more money to pay their bills with. That said, content creators are already voicing split opinions on the matter as comments in the video in question.
On one hand, it’s as YouTube says – unskippable ads are more lucrative. On the other, unskippable ads will annoy a lot of viewers, who will then either choose not to watch the video entirely, or use ad blockers. This then results in YouTubers making less money. So it’s a balancing act for content creators. This is especially true when the max length for such videos are 20 seconds, while skippable ads range from less than the five seconds it takes to skip it, to over five minutes, which can be longer than the video they’re on.
Either way, YouTubers will have to decide if unskippable ads are for them, their channel and their viewers. And it’s no easy task being stacked onto the existing demonetisation atmosphere.
