Ads and free content have been intertwined since the early days of the internet and no website embodies this business model more than YouTube, the biggest video-sharing platform in the world. Every person who’s ever watched a YouTube video is familiar with the platform’s many different types of advertising — some skippable and some aren’t.
Now, some users have called out the Alphabet subsidiary for pushing it possibly a tad too far with the pre-roll ads. According to a report by Gizmochina, several users on Twitter and Reddit posted photos of the online video platform serving them five ads on a single video.
hmm…this may happen with a certain type of ad format called bumper ads, since they're only up to 6 seconds long. if you'd like, you can send feedback directly from YouTube via the send feedback tool
— TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) September 7, 2022
The posters also claim that the ads are none skippable, meaning that users have to endure all five before being able to watch the actual content they clicked on. On Twitter, YouTube actually responded to one of the tweets complaining about the flurry of commercials, explaining that the format is called bumper ads.
Bumper ads are nothing new on the platform; they are unskippable six-second ads that roll out before the video even starts. As some have pointed out, this type of advert is usually only served two at a time for a video, so the amount that is infuriating users is definitely out of the norm.
The report states that not all monetised videos on YouTube have five bumper ads, which implies that this format change might still be in the testing phase and has not rolled out widely across the platform just yet. The company has not formally announced such a switch-up, so it’s currently unknown if the five unskippable adverts will be a mainstay moving forward.
Of course, if you want to skip commercials on the platform altogether, you have the option of purchasing a subscription to YouTube Premium, which costs RM17.90 per month in Malaysia. The subscription gives you an ad-free experience, background play, offline downloading, and access to the company’s music streaming service. That said, there are also countless other methods to get around ads on the internet.
(Source: Gizmochina)
