YouTube is once again showing more ads to free users and making them harder to skip.
A Reddit user named CSOCSO-FL noticed an updated ad format on YouTube that made it extremely hard to skip ads. Essentially, the issue with this updated format stems from a large banner/card that contains the ad itself, which is conveniently placed directly over it.
The skip button didn’t disappear despite what some users thought; the poster noted that the card can be flicked down to reveal it, or the phone rotated to landscape mode to see it as well.
As some users pointed out, the ad that played for the original poster was a risqué AI chatbot rated Mature 17+ (ironic), with one user noting it was even displayed on YouTube Kids — yikes.
Separately, people using the YouTube app on TVs are reporting that longer, unskippable ads are popping up. While unskippable ads for TV viewers are usually capped at 30 seconds, it appears that some unskippable ads are now 90 seconds long.
Now, it appears that the 90-second unskippable ads aren’t available everywhere yet and are in a testing phase in some markets before rolling out, especially since the Google Ads help page still mentions the 30-second limit.
If you do want to skip some ads (and avoid YouTube banning your favourite adblocker), the platform launched its YouTube Premium Lite tier last May, which only removes some ads. But most videos should be ad-free, and it’s better than nothing.
Source: U/CSOCSO-FL Via Android Police
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