For nearly two years, the idea of YouTube showing ads when you pause a video has been circulating within the creator community. While it started appearing sporadically a few months ago, YouTube has now confirmed that these pause ads are being implemented globally.
According to a recent announcement from YouTube’s commercial team, all advertisers can now place their ads in paused videos across the platform. YouTube began testing this feature in 2023 with a limited group of advertisers, and by April, Google’s chief business officer, Philipp Schindler, revealed that the concept was highly successful, generating significant revenue for the company.
In the past few weeks, Reddit users have noticed a wider rollout of these pause ads, as confirmed by 9to5Google. YouTube suggests that the goal of these ads is to offer a “less interruptive” experience during viewing. However, it’s unclear if this will reduce the number of standard ads. YouTube has previously experimented with longer, less frequent ads, and introduced unskippable ads in 2023
