YouTube to remove some ad controls for creators

YouTube is relinquishing some ad controls from creators so they no longer can choose which ads their viewers are shown

YouTube is making some important changes to its ad controls available to creators. Starting in November, the platform will drop individual ad controls in YouTube Studio for pre-roll, post-roll, skippable, and non-skippable ads on new videos.

The news was revealed through a support document from the company bylined by “Rob,” a member of the YouTube team. The new changes will allow creators to choose between having ads before or after a video on or off. If creators choose to have ads, YouTube will choose whether to show pre-roll, post-roll, skippable, or non-skippable ads "when appropriate."

“Most creators shouldn’t notice a change as they already have many of these ad formats turned on by default,” Rob said. “In the last year, for long-form videos that were enabled for monetization at the time of publishing, more than 90 percent of videos had pre-roll, post-roll, skippable, and non-skippable ads turned on.”

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This would come as a disappointment for many creators who wanted to have more control over which ads they wanted their viewers to see.

YouTube is also introducing a few new ad options for mid-roll ads for live streams, where creators will be able to see a 60-second countdown before an ad appears, with an option to skip that ad if they don’t want to interrupt the stream. Moreover, creators can also delay the mid-roll ads for 10 minutes. With long-form videos, YouTube says creators will be able to choose to have automated mid-roll ad breaks and manually selected ones.

The company is working with better ad controls for its platforms with 30-second unskippable ads on connected TVs and disabling videos for people using adblockers.