YouTube Experiments with New Ad Format for Enhanced Viewing Experience

• Google
• YouTube

YouTube, the well-known video-sharing platform owned by Google, is currently testing a new ad format on its television app. The main difference that viewers can expect is that there will be fewer ads, but each ad will be more extended in duration. According to Google, this new ad format is being tested to enhance the viewing experience, particularly during long-form content viewing. This is similar to the ad breaks we are used to seeing during regular linear TV programming. Additionally, YouTube is considering updating the ad timer on TV to provide users with a better experience. Viewers with a clearer understanding of the remaining time in the ad break. Currently, YouTube displays the length of each ad with a placeholder that reads "Ad 1 of 2," which does not clearly indicate the total duration of the ad break. Google has announced plans to start testing this new timer, which will focus on the whole time of the ad break, shortly.

With its latest experiments, YouTube is ushering in a new era of digital ad experience.

YouTubers Brace for Changes in Ad Format

YouTube introduced unskippable 30-second ads to TVs earlier this year. In April alone, the company had reached 150 million people across connected TVs in the U.S. The latest announcement revealed that viewers are consuming over 700 million hours of YouTube content on TV screens every day. This demonstrates the platform's importance as an ad surface for the company.

Moreover, YouTube has been focusing on improving its features. In March, the company released a multiview feature for sports, allowing viewers to watch multiple games simultaneously. In June, this feature was extended to non-sports content, further improving the user experience.

Google's experimentation is not confined solely to YouTube ads on TVs. The tech giant announced that starting in November, it will remove some ad controls from creators, limiting their ability to choose pre-roll, post-roll, skippable, and non-skippable ads. Now, creators can only toggle ads on or off, with the ad format determined by YouTube's system. However, they will gain control to insert ads in a live stream manually.