YouTube to kill one of its most annoying types of ads in 2018

YouTube has a lot of advertising formats. The most irritating of these is the unskippable 30-second advert. And in my own personal experience, these show up at the most inconvenient times, like when you’re trying to show a friend a hilarious video that you’ve totally built-up.

Sure there are ways to avoid these adverts entirely (it rhymes with ‘schmadblock‘). But soon you won’t have to, as next year Google is discontinuing this much-maligned advertising format entirely.

In a statement, Google said that it aims to offer a better viewing experience for its users, adding “As part of that, we’ve decided to stop supporting 30-second unskippable ads as of 2018 and focus instead on formats that work well for both users and advertisers.”

Other advertising formats will remain unskippable, including the 20-second advert slots.

The decision to discontinue this advertising format is a sound one, although in the short term it’ll probably cost Google. The video streaming landscape has changed drastically over the past few years, and YouTube is no longer the only player in town.

Instagram and Facebook have both beefed-up their video offerings, and look set to eat YouTube’s dinner. Then there’s competition from insurgent upstarts like vid.me and Rumble.

To stay competitive, Google has to think about the user experience of YouTube. And a good first-step is to remove the most irritating advertising format on the site.