Ads are a part of our lives- a BIG part. We’re used to seeing them before and during YouTube videos, but those were usually pretty painless. However, there seems to be a notable uptick in ads on YouTube.
Usually, you’ll see between one and two ads before a typical video. Shorter ads will play all the way through, while longer ads give you the ability to skip a few seconds in. You’ll see this during longer videos if the uploader so chooses.
But, some users are seeing an uptick in YouTube ads
Users across Twitter and Reddit are posting about seeing more ads on YouTube in several ways. We have cases where people are seeing as many as five ads during a break where there were only two (via Twitter). It gets worse, however, as some users are reporting seeing up to 10 ads in a video.
Along with more ads per break, some users are reporting more breaks per video. There are reports of people seeing ad breaks every couple of minutes. Also, most of these ads are unskippable. This means that the viewer is stuck watching a wall of ads while watching videos.
One point that 9To5Google brought up was that the unskippable ads are usually about five seconds long. So, an ad break with 10 5-second ads would be just 50 seconds. However, that’s a really long time compared to what we’re used to with YouTube videos.
We’ve grown accustomed to waiting between 10 and 15 seconds before watching our favorite videos. However, 50 seconds is a bit overboard. It makes sense waiting a while to watch TV shows on something like Tubi or Hulu, but it’s different when you’re talking about shorter YouTube videos.
YouTube hasn’t released any comment on these claims. Hopefully, it’s an oversight or a bug. If this continues, more users will start looking for alternatives to the YouTube app. There are YouTube apps on the market that promise ad-blocking capabilities, and we know that the company does NOT like those.
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