Effective 2018, YouTube will no longer subscribe to unskippable 30-second ads in an official statement given to Campaign on February 17th. According to a spokesperson from Google, the move is an attempt to deliver better advertising experience to its users.
The video-sharing website will instead focus on its six-second bumper ads, which launched in April 2016. These bumper ads will remain unskippable while any other ads that are shorter than 30 seconds can now be skipped.
Experts agree that the decision to drop long, unskippable ads will improve user experience as consumers clearly do not enjoy mandatory viewing of ads before they can get to the videos they intend to watch.
Advertisers will likely not be pleased with this move but with the trends in social advertising evidently affecting how social media platforms are dealing with the ever-changing user preference, it would appear that YouTube is making a wise move to ensure that they maintain a firm grasp of their market. Otherwise, competitors such as Facebook, whose video offering is growing on brands, may overtake the video-sharing website.
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