It is a familiar bugbear
There you are, watching a nice and long YouTube video, when an ad, usually with a soundtrack of a trembling ukulele and a glockenspiel, gets annoyingly smudged somewhere in the middle of the road.
YouTube has a television-inspired solution to the problem, and announced it will test the execution of two skippable pre-roll ads together, according to a blog post published on Wednesday.
That means that ads are less likely to appear in the middle of a video, since YouTube estimates that users will experience up to 40 percent fewer ad interruptions in a session.
OK, it may not look like much. YouTube said it is in response to research showing that viewers are “very sensitive” to the frequency of advertising breaks, especially when they watch longer videos. Oh yes, do you remember how annoying the ads were during those days of watching a movie on TV?
YouTube said it will present the new experience in desktop computers this year, which will be followed by mobile phones and then televisions.
The change also seems to be good news for advertisers, as YouTube claims an increase of 8 to 11 percent in single-range in the first experiments.
It’s another in a line of YouTube experiments to try to get people to see ads, with the display of non-skippable ads for creators, interactive ads and vertical formats.
You can not avoid them, so they may well work for you.