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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    7 months ago

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

  • empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    7 months ago

    Wait y’all still see ads on YouTube?

    If I can’t block ads on a device, I’m not using YouTube on that particular device.

    • Cheems@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      For real, the ads are freaking insane on there nowadays. I couldn’t handle it.

  • Electric@lemmy.world
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    7 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.

  • foggy@lemmy.world
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    7 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.

    • CosmoNova@lemmy.world
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      7 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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          7 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.

      • ripcord@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        I use it all the time but I definitely don’t use the “algorithm”.

    • woelkchen@lemmy.world
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      7 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.

      • CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        7 months ago

        The only company that can compete with YouTube is pornhub. People have been begging on their hands and knees for them to enter the hard space. It’s fertile territory, with lots of the kinks worked out. I really hope they spank YouTube in the nuts and give it a go.

      • gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        7 months ago

        Also they leave their Patreon shout-outs in which is not what I’m paying money for

        No, but it’s what other people have paid for. Usually at the end of a video past it’s actual content, in what’s considered the “credits”, people who helped pay are tradiditionaly part of that.

        If it’s elsewhere in the video that fucks with flow then yeah, that’s bad, but the normal process has been in place for longer than either of us has been alive

        • woelkchen@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          No, but it’s what other people have paid for.

          Which Sponsor Block skips. My point is that the viewing experience is currently better on YouTube despite the enshittification because the competition is worse. The least would be to support chapter marks but this is one area this specific competitor also lacks and no Sponsor Block alternative for Nebula exists. For much shit on YouTube there are workaround like Sponsor Block. For shit on other platforms these don’t exist.

  • 【J】【u】【s】【t】【Z】@lemmy.world
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    7 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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      7 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.

  • azenyr@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    To be fair, if they are like the example (static silent ads) they would be the least intrusive ads that YouTube ever had. To the point that I don’t even mind them. All of YouTube ads should be like this, not annoying, silent, and easily ignored.

  • Got_Bent@lemmy.world
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    7 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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      7 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.

  • NutWrench@lemmy.world
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    7 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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        7 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.

  • Plopp@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    This is great, because I usually pause videos because I want to watch ads.

  • Victor@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    They already do that on my TV. Except it’s after I press play and when it’s been paused for like a minute or more, or something.

    But this is a whole new level of making it shittier. Like, I want to pause so I can hear something else, or something needs my attention, and there’s an ad playing? This can’t become a reality. Can’t.

    I mean I already rock the best ad blocker so it’s whatever to me on desktop, but on my TV? I’m gonna have to get a pi-hole.