YouTube is currently testing a new way to display ads. Now, as we know YouTube has been showing us advertisements in the middle of videos much as like the Facebook ads, which could end up being distracting for most, especially in longer videos. However, The new Ad Pods from Google is where YouTube will play two back-to-back skippable ads during videos. This, as YouTube says will lead to ‘Up to 40 percent fewer interruptions by ads in the session”. This feature is to be excepted to roll out to the desktop first and later to be followed by Android on mobiles and then on Android TV’s this year.
In a recent blog post, Google has been saying that the way viewers will watch videos is changing. And that the decision was taken on a user experience research, Google says in longer videos, viewers are “quite sensitive to the frequency of ad breaks.” Also stating that fewer the interruptions better the active users on a given point of time. This new method also supposedly makes the user have higher rates of ad views. Here Google will now show back-to-back ads along with the normal skip the ads option, just in case if the user does want to.
In their blog post, Google states that users will experience up to 40 percent fewer interruptions by ads in a session. And based in the internal experiments, They are stating that there was an 8-10 percent of the increase in unique reach of a video and along with this, 5-10 percent of the increase in frequency for advertisers also posing no changes to the Brand Lift metrics.
We also know as per a screenshot shared by Google in the same post, users will be presented with a notification explaining that they can choose to watch two ads at that moment or to watch within between interruptions in the later part of the video, as for in the beta stage, the decision is for the user to take rather than Google trying to force something to you.