YouTube changes its ad breaks

YouTube has announced improvements to commercial breaks in the middle of videos. From mid-May, the video platform announced on a support page that commercials will not interrupt the speakers in the middle of the video, but will instead start at "natural interruption points" such as pauses and transitions.

With the changes, YouTube apparently wants to reduce the number of people who stop watching a video during playback as a result of the advertisement. From the video platform's perspective, this is also a nuisance for advertisers. Trials in July 2024 showed that the new system led to an average of five percent more advertising revenue –, meaning that some viewers watched the videos for longer.

New feedback tool

With a new feedback tool, which will be rolled out from this week, the platform also wants to support those who continue to opt for manually set interruptions. If it is determined that many viewers are dropping out at a self-set point, creators will receive a notification in YouTube Studio and can move the commercial break to a different position.

For older videos with manual interruption points, YouTube wants to insert additional, automatically set commercial breaks. If you do not want this, you can prevent it in YouTube Studio. Nothing will change for anyone who has only used automatic breaks up to now.

Continued freedom of choice

YouTube emphasizes that it remains the free decision of the creator whether to allow interruptions during the playback of their videos. This option is only available for videos longer than eight minutes anyway.

(mki)