On its official Creator Insider channel, YouTube has announced that it will expanding the role that non-skippable ads play on its platform. The company has announced that it will be rolling out non-skippable ads to all content creators who are able to monetize their videos.
YouTube originally rolled out the option to select content creators but has announced that it will now be expanding it to other content creators. The announcement video mentions that this move will allow content creators to make more money off of their videos since advertisers are willing to pay more for ads that can’t be skipped after a few seconds.
While this might be a good move for content creators, it will likely be a source of frustration for YouTube’s audience as many people have likely gotten used to being able to skip ads after five seconds. On the bright side, YouTube’s video support page does say that the ads will range in length from 15 t0 20 seconds. While this might be three to four times as long as some viewers are accustomed to with the skippable ads, it is still quite a bit shorter than ads found on TV.
Moving back to content creators, it will be interesting to see how the YouTube community reacts to this change overall. While some creators will likely welcome the chance to make more money, it is possible that it could hurt some smaller content creators who are still growing their audience. Dedicated fans may be willing to sit through 20-second ads for every video, but someone searching for new content might not be so patient.
Another issue is one of Pateron-support channels. There’s a subset of YouTube creators, such as Jim Sterling’s channel, that do not play ads before their videos, instead relying on Pateron supporters. However, there are times when companies will place copyright restrictions on certain videos which will automatically play ads regardless of the wishes of the YouTube channel owner. Whether these new unskippable ads will factor into such cases remains to be seen.
Regardless, you’ll likely be seeing more and more unskippable ads coming to YouTube within the next few weeks.
