YouTube first spoke about pause ads last year when it started trialing them in select regions. At the time, the company said that when you pause a video, it will shrink, and an ad will appear next to it.

Example:

“In Q1, we saw strong traction from the introduction of a pause ads pilot on connected TVs, a new non-interruptive ad format that appears when users pause their organic content,” Schindler noted. He went on to share that YouTube’s pause ads are “driving strong brand lift results” and “are commanding premium pricing from advertisers.”

Schindler didn’t share any timelines for when pause ads will start appearing on YouTube, but we know they’ll first roll out on smart TVs. The nature of these ads, including their duration, skippability, and more is still unclear. We also don’t know if Google plans to introduce these ads on YouTube’s mobile apps.

  • jqubed@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    But usually I’m pausing a video to try to read text that appeared too briefly in the video!

      • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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        2 months ago

        I still get chills thinking about that guy who gets blocked from communicating with ANYONE AT ALL EVER! Especially as companies like Reddit go ban-happy on a power trip and Youtube destroys channels with bullshit content strikes.

  • foggy@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    I can’t wait til YouTube fucks around and finds out.

    I got hobbies that are way more fun than ads.

    I’m addicted to their shit because it provides a constant stream of dopamine. You fuck that up with ads, I will break the addiction. Seamlessly. It won’t even be difficult to do if going back kicks me in the balls with ads. I’m gone. My guitar is right here. My home server is right here. My GitHub profile could use some TLC. I got a long Todo list.

    Do it. Go full enshitification.

    I’m actually kind of excited for it.

    • Mkengine@feddit.de
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      2 months ago

      This was me with Reddit, my worst days were 8 hours a day. Now I spent 30 mins per day at most on Lemmy.

      • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Yeah, my first reaction to seeing the API changes on Reddit was actually more of a glee/relief response than upset/disappointed. It meant that its grip on me was going to be over once those changes went through. I was worried the protests might get them to back down because I hated it there but always knew that the easy dopamine was just an app away.

        Now I’m here though. I don’t hate it here, at least not yet, but I haven’t freed up the time like I was hoping to.

    • CosmoNova@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      While I share your sentiment, they’ve got a backdoor for exactly that scenario: Youtube Premium. We are addicted to the algorithm and a lot of us are willing to pay good money for their stream of dopamine. Of course Google will eventually mess up there too, but it could easily give them another decade of intense money milking.

        • CosmoNova@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          Neither do I, but that’s hardly the point. The house of cards you’re describing is reinforced with concrete steel. Unless you’re a creator with a massive audience, Youtube does not need you.

  • NutWrench@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Damn. YouTube is just SO desperate to squeeze every bit of ad revenue they can, wherever they can.

      • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        When it was hemorrhaging money?

        We’re in a weird time where all the tech companies are being told at once that they need to start being profitable, and at the same time the EU is cracking down on lots of the shady shit they’ve been using to control the bleeding to this point.

        The internet has spent the last 20 years developing an economic model that’s quickly becoming unsustainable, and none of the big web companies seem to have been prepared.

  • Electric@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    I’ve had this for about a week or 2. Super annoying because you can’t continue the video by pressing the play/pause button, need to “Ok” the video window. Come on Google, you just bricked a button on your OWN OS. Awful.

    • Llewellyn@lemm.ee
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      2 months ago

      There are ways to completely neutralize ublock power: put ads on the same server, as content + randomise div identificators

      UPD: by the downvotes I conclude people think I’m from the advertising industry.
      I’m not. I know these methods, because I have been struggling with counteracting such ads.

      • ours@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Yeah, they could put the ads in the same stream but it would be too costly or inflexible. Ads have to be targeted to the specific market or even user so that would kill their advantage and turn them into generic TV ads.

        • diffusive@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          If you don’t have to reencode but only concatenate the streams it can be done for your request specifically because it’s not meaningfully more expensive than just serving the content

          • lorkano@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            What stops you with skipping past this part of the stream? It would be more effective on livestreams, not videos. Anyway eventually people will get so pissed and every popular video could go through a server first and remove ads part via AI. There is no end to adblock war

            • diffusive@lemmy.world
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              2 months ago

              The position and length can be randomized, for sure you can throw ai at it… but ai is stupidly expensive… companies that offer AI systems are all operating that business at loss… and no big company would engage in something like this… distilled model on client? Sure… but who trains it? My point is… things can get worse and worse

    • Joelk111@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Laughs in… Supporting creators by supporting them in other ways than watching ads on their videos, right? Right???

        • Joelk111@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          Sweet, for sure, I have no issue with that.

          The people complaining about ads who don’t support creators in other ways is what bothers me.

          • TwoCubed@feddit.de
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            2 months ago

            I don’t know man, I loved YouTube back in the days when people made videos for shits and giggles. No one expected money from that.

  • 【J】【u】【s】【t】【Z】@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    YouTube is unwatchable for me with all these ads. Even without ads, content creators mostly all follow the same generic bullshit format.

    It used to be a great resource for visual aids and explanations, now it’s filled with money making schemes and scams and every video has 14 minutes of bullshit and 1 minute of content.

    • Aceticon@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      15 minutes videos of some over excited guy overlayed on or overlayed by lots of cutesy/flashy/cartoony pics, interspected by irrelevant/low-brow-humour “I’m so cool” video segments, padded with tons of fluffy talk and with every silly post-production effect conceivable, to make a point that could have been made in 2 minutes.

      I barelly every watch Youtube nowadays, especially if I’m looking to actually learn something or for the solution for a specific problem.

  • Got_Bent@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    My Roku is doing this and has been doing this for quite some time.

    Of all the ad delivery schemes cooked up over the past ten years, this one is the least offensive to me.

    Like I’ll come back from the bathroom or whatever, and all that registers before I hit play is that some random graphic is covering the screen while on pause. I cannot name a single thing that’s been in any of those ads.

    In general, I do wonder how effective this constant onslaught of marketing is. At some point there have got to be diminishing returns, right?

    • Wogi@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      We’re in the era of diminishing returns. There’s so little left to squeeze out of the working class that every extra dollar they want costs more than the last one. They’re running out of options on how to convince us to let go of those dollars.

    • SouthEndSunset@lemm.ee
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      2 months ago

      I agree. But at the same time, if I pause something, I want it to pause and I want the noise to stop.

      • HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        In this comment, old man yells at cloud:

        When the phone rings, I need to be able to press one button to pause my video and stop the sound. Not two. I still have to hunt for my phone (assuming they are different devices) and find the right button on that thing, since I now have five different phones in my house and they all accept calls differently (unless I program them, and since they belong to people who aren’t me, I don’t get to). I’m turning into a goddamn luddite and I love technology, I just am running out of attention span.

    • Notorious_handholder@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      In general, I do wonder how effective this constant onslaught of marketing is. At some point there have got to be diminishing returns, right?

      This is what I keep saying, and it is a question that bothers me and riles me up far more than it ever should. Like I and all of my friends and family have just learned to auto tune out ads at this point. We are so constantly drowned in ads everyday that now my brain just automatically filters them out as background noise. The few times one does slip through I completely forget about it 10 seconds later as it is lost in the whirlwind of fast paced chaotic life where I can’t even remember if I ate breakfast that morning. Either that or it slips through because it is obnoxiously intrusive, in which case that product and company go on my shit list.

      The only time an ad still works on me is if I am specifically looking for a product. In which case I still tune out 90% of targeted ads cause I know most of them are fake scams anyways. The other 10% I check user reviews from actual people to narrow down what I want.

      I’m trained to distrust any ads now and even other posts about products online because everything online is either fake or a scam or both. Or the ads are for big brands that I already know exist and I know not to trust they’re ads as well because they are so constantly in my face. Like I really don’t need an ad to remind me that [major corporation brand] still exists, and I sure as shit ain’t gonna have whatever stupid thing they suggest be my first option.

      How tf are ads supposed to work when we are so desensitized to them?

    • woelkchen@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      I don’t think they will because the competition is too incompetent. I give you two examples:

      I’m a subscriber of Nebula, a paid streaming service where educational YouTubers get a better cut and users don’t get ads. Those creators almost always fail to promote their Nebula uploads. “Hey guys, new video.” And they link to YouTube only. Also they leave their Patreon shout-outs in which is not what I’m paying money for. YouTube with Sponsor Block just is the better experience at this point and I just keep paying for Nebula because I hope it’ll get better and I like its idea.

      Second example: I try to watch live streaming on the websites of the broadcaster or so. And more often than not it’s a shit show: I can’t properly pause the streams because they don’t support time shifting and bitrate adjustments are also not as smooth as YouTube.

      It’s 2024 and internet video is over two decades old at this point and yet almost nobody else manages to get their shit together. Companies like Netflix have good tech but their business is completely different, so those compete with YouTube at best tangentially.

    • FleetingTit@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      If this comes on top of the current ad-load then it is enshitification. If it replaces mid- or pre-roll ads it might make youtube somewhat usable again, even without adblocking.

  • fidodo@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    So they’ll stop injecting ads in the middle of videos at the worst possible times right?

    So they’ll stop injecting ads… Right?

      • pyre@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        ublock origin users barely noticed. you just have to update filters every now and then.

        • ShunkW@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          And if you have the knowledge or savvy to use a network wide solution like pihole, I haven’t seen an ad in over a year. It’s not a perfect solution cuz I haven’t figured out how to filter ads on Mobile. But I’ve accepted that I just watch YouTube on my laptop or desktop.

          • TwoCubed@feddit.de
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            2 months ago

            You can use Revanced for example. Alphabet is trying to fuck that up too, but it’s still going strong. Plus, a revanced YouTube is a lot better than the regular app. Want to get rid of Shorts? Revanced will let you get rid of those shitty videos for good. Hate sponsor messages in Videos? Revanced will let you integrated sponsorblock.

            The day that revanced won’t work anymore is the day I’ll stop using YouTube.

          • pyre@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            revanced is so good. not only stops ads but has sponsorblock as well.