YouTube Is Making Users Watch Up To Five Ads Before A Video
YouTube will now be placing as many as five ads before the videos on its non-premium service.
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YouTube has really been seeing some anger among its user base over the last few days. This week’s first snafu happened when the video streaming platform was accused of not properly filtering out violence and sexual content on their YouTube Kids app, and now they’re being targeted for their annoying new ad strategy. That’s right, if you were already at your wits’ end with streaming services like Netflix moving forward with their own ad-ridden breaks, prepare yourself because YouTube is planning to make you wait a longtime before you can check out your selected video. Without as much as an announcement, YouTube bumped up their number of ads from two to up to five overnight.
The worst part? As many users are noticing, you can no longer watch a clip of the product placement and then skip ahead to the content that brought you to the site in the first place. Ah, the good ‘ol days.
The good news for those who pay to use YouTube Premium is that the changeup is only happening for those who haven’t subscribed and are receiving the service at its lowest base – YouTube Free. But, as you can imagine, YouTube Free users weren’t very happy, quickly taking to various platforms like Reddit and Twitter to voice their outrage.
In one tweet, which you can see above, a user took a photo of their screen commenting on their annoyance of needing to sit through a whopping “5 long unskippable ads”. Only slightly copping to the new addition, YouTube took to Twitter to clear things up. Their response, which you can see below, did little to assuage worries among subscribers.
Beginning with an unhelpful “hmm,” as if they weren’t sure why a new plan they put into place was happening, the response revealed that the unskippable five commercials is most likely due to something called “bumper ads”. They went on to explain that there were so many ads because each clip was only six-seconds long. Passing this one off to the customer service team, the tweet rounded itself out instructing those upset with the newly implemented changes to send in their feedback to YouTube.
As mentioned at the top, streaming juggernaut Netflix is also considering moving towards a tiered plan that would see some paying extra to view their favorite shows and films ad free. The announcement came after the platform revealed their intent to up the price of their service, receiving pushback and the loss of a multitude of subscribers. Like YouTube, Netflix is surely thinking of the business aspect of things and how to bring in more money, knowing that people will continue to pay for their content no matter what.
While some of you may be reading this while using YouTube Free and wondering why you haven’t received the annoying extra ads quite yet, you may be in luck. It would seem as though the new changes are moving slowly with YouTube possibly testing out the waters before launching the program fully. Along with being a pain in the behind for users, this one is bound to hurt performers like Jojo Siwa and MrBeast.
