Don’t Pay for YouTube Premium? Get Ready for Unskippable 30-Second Ads

YouTube viewers who watch videos on their TV may soon start seeing longer ads very soon. Until now, YouTube usually showed two shorter 15-second ads back-to-back, but it turns out YouTube has other plans for TV users.

YouTube’s unskippable 30-second ads are now rolling out globally

Google has begun rolling out 30-second unskippable ads in the YouTube app for TV worldwide (via Android Headlines). With this new format, advertisers can instead run a single 30-second ad that viewers cannot skip. With this change, YouTube continues chasing traditional TV advertising budgets. Longer ads make the platform more appealing to advertisers because they match the familiar 30-second TV commercial format used for decades.

At the same time, YouTube usage on televisions keeps growing rapidly. Many viewers now watch YouTube on their TV, and so much so that it feels YouTube might be eating the share of cable channels. Because of that shift, Google believes viewers may accept longer ads more easily in a living-room environment.

This could also match the recent YouTube push to bring more users to subscribe to YouTube Premium if they don’t want ads. YouTube Premium removes ads entirely and adds other perks like background playback and downloads. Some of us may have noticed that YouTube has gradually increased the number and length of ads over the years. Longer, unavoidable, and more frequent ads might make some viewers decide the subscription makes more sense. 

From YouTube’s perspective, both outcomes help the platform: users either watch ads or pay for an ad-free experience. Bottom line, YouTube’s new ad format shows how the platform is inching closer to TV. As more viewers watch on the big screen, the company appears willing to experiment with longer ad breaks that resemble classic TV commercials. And for most of us, that will be, oh well, frustrating.

Would you tolerate a 30-second unskippable ad on YouTube TV, or would that push you toward YouTube Premium?