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. PHOTO: FILE

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.

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