Even YouTube’s pause screen won’t be safe from smart TV ads soon, as Google hints it will soon follow Hulu, Max and Peacock
If you thought YouTube’s pre-roll and mid-roll ads were already too much, then you’ll love the next monetization strategy: pause screen ads.
This idea has already been tried in a number of YouTube TV apps. As the name suggests, when you pause a video, instead of letting the app sit idle while it waits for you to come back, the app shrinks the video and starts showing an ad next to it until you click play again.
During Alphabet’s recent quarterly investor call (via Android Authority), Philipp Schindler, Google’s Chief Business Officer, praised the ad format, saying, “In the first quarter, we saw strong traction with the introduction of a pilot for pause ads on connected TVs.”
Given the positive things Schindler had to say, it seems likely that the trial will soon be rolled out more widely to other YouTube TV apps, and perhaps even to other versions of YouTube.
YouTube wouldn’t be the first streaming platform to introduce pause ads. These new forms of commercial breaks can already be found on Hulu, Max and Peacock and have been a feature of these services for years.
Admittedly, pausing ads isn’t all bad. A clear benefit to the viewer is that they don’t interrupt your viewing experience unless you actively choose to pause – perhaps to take a bathroom break or replenish your snacks. On the other hand, we doubt they will replace the more disruptive mid-roll ads; instead, they’ll probably just appear next to them.
Again, you could see this as the price for enjoying the free YouTube platform, but you could more cynically see it as the platform worsening the experience and pushing you to pay for Premium – which might even mean higher Premium prices. justifies pricing, as the alternative is an ad-ridden minefield of marketing.
There’s no word yet on when a wider release of pause ads on YouTube could happen, but it would be yet another example of the increasing ad infestation we’re seeing everywhere – with Roku recently launching its first video ads on the home screen from TV OS brought . And if it continues to prove successful for the streaming platforms, you might want to prepare to pause ads on even more of the top streaming services in the future.