One of the most annoying types of ads on YouTube will finally stop appearing on the platform starting in April 2023.
YouTube has chosen to put an end to one of the most annoying and intrusive ads that appear in the videos on its platform. The Google subsidiary decided to change the way in which advertising appears in monetized content, so it will remove “overlay ads” from all material stored on its servers from April 6 of this year.
As he mentioned via a post on his official blog , “ad overlays” are a type of banner-style pop-up advertising that often interrupt or obscure content that is playing on YouTube desktop or browser. The firm has revealed that the “legacy ad format” has been deemed “harmful to viewers” and will therefore be removed.
It’s important to mention that the option hasn’t been available in the YouTube mobile app for a long time , and its replacement is the often-skippable pre-, mid-, and post-roll ad formats.
YouTube says goodbye to its most annoying ads
The message posted by the company on the YouTube Help Forum mentions the following: “As of April 6, 2023, the ad format “overlay ads” will no longer appear on YouTube to help improve the viewer experience and change engagement to higher-performing ad formats on mobile and desktop. Ad overlays are a legacy ad format that was only displayed on desktop computers and is annoying for viewers. We expect the impact to be limited for most creators as engagement shifts to other ad formats . “
The video platform has also stated that removing the ads overlay option will have “limited impact” on YouTube Creators . To combat this, a shift to “other ad formats” will take place, but no further details were shared regarding this. Since desktop platforms are the only place where “overlay ads” are shown, this option may represent a smaller proportion of the ads shown on eligible monetized content.
YouTube “ad overlays” with expiration dates
Starting April 6, 2023, it will no longer be possible to enable or add “ad overlays” from YouTube Studio when accessing content monetization options. It’s not entirely clear what Google plans to replace these pop-up ads with, but “other ad formats” could look at the recent “Product tagging” feature , which allows creators to tag products used or featured in videos. .
What is certain is that desktop viewers will benefit the most from this decision by YouTube as intrusive elements will no longer hide or interfere with the video content. Some ad blocking plugins were already capable of blocking these types of ads and it remains to be seen how this could be replaced.