Part of YouTube’s approach to luring its subscribers to the premium tier seems to frustrate users enough to get fed up and pay. For example, ads can be quite annoying at the free subscription level and many users sign up for YouTube Premium just to get rid of it. And this situation may become even more frustrating in the near future. YouTube may soon make some changes to its TV apps that seem even more annoying.
During its YouTube Brandcast event this week, the company confirmed that non-skippable 30-second ads are coming to TVs soon. As a recent statistic shows, slightly less than half of all YouTube views occur on TVs. This clearly shows that YouTube is a much more important Netflix competitor for viewers than many other brands in the same space.
YouTube is also bringing “pause experiences” to TVs, in addition to the non-skippable 30-second ads for those who haven’t signed up for ad-free YouTube Premium. While no clear date has been announced for when these changes will take effect, this additional ad format happens on your screen every time you pause a piece of content.
In short, it looks like some really annoying decisions are being made to steer users towards YouTube Premium. It is also worth remembering the decisions taken against ad-blocking plugins.
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