YouTube Killing 30-Second Unskippable Ads
If you watch a lot of YouTube videos (which, let's face it, you do), and you don't have a YouTube Red account, you've almost certainly encountered a 30-second advertisement you can't skip.
Fortunately, those long, unskippable advertisements will soon be a thing of the past. As The Drum reports, YouTube is doing away with 30-second unskippable ads in 2018. But the Google-owned video site has no plans to ditch its 20-second and 6-second unskippable ad formats.
"We're committed to providing a better ads experience for users online," a Google spokesperson told PCMag in an email. "As part of that, we've decided to stop supporting 30-second unskippable ads as of 2018 and focus instead on formats that work well for both users and advertisers."
YouTube didn't go into detail about its rationale, but the move has to do with people's shortening attention spans, according to The Drum. People are more likely to abandon a video when forced to watch a long, unskippable ad, something YouTube and its creators don't want. The site needs to make sure users stay engaged, especially as Facebook serves up more compeition in the video space.
Meanwhile, if you want to skip the ads altogether, you can opt for a $10 monthly subscription to YouTube Red, which offers uninterrupted music and ad-free videos. As a Subscriber, you can also save videos to watch on your phone or tablet without an Internet connection, as well as play videos in the background while doing something else on your device.
In other advertising news, Facebook recently took a page out of YouTube's book and started letting advertisers display ads inside videos.
This article originally appeared on PCMag.com.