(Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Don’t be surprised to see YouTube ad breaks as long 45 seconds while watching on a TV.
YouTube is rolling out longer ad breaks for TV viewers, months after it began implementing 30-second unskippable ads. But in return, the service promises it’ll show fewer ad breaks, limiting the interruptions during normal viewing.
On Thursday, Google posted a new support document about the change, which the company began exploring in September, after conducting a survey of users on ad formats. The announcement didn’t mention the length of the new ad breaks, but the company included a GIF that shows one such ad reaching at least 47 seconds—none of it skippable.
In a statement, a Google spokesperson said "ad break lengths will vary depending on skippable ads versus non-skippable ads," though they declined to say exactly how long the breaks will last.
Longer ad breaks may annoy users, of course, but Google says they will only appear “on certain long-form content.” In addition, the longer ad breaks will also show the “total time remaining,” versus the number of ads served.
The company claims that most users prefer longer ad breaks over shorter ones spaced out more frequently. “When it comes to long-form content on TV screens, 79% of viewers would prefer video ads that are grouped together instead of distributed throughout a video,” Google wrote in the support post. “Based on this preference, we evaluated fewer, longer ad breaks, to create a more seamless viewing experience on the big screen.”
The support document goes on to say TV users will start seeing ads when watching YouTube Shorts on the big screen. “The viewer experience for Shorts ads on connected TVs is consistent with mobile, and viewers can use their TV remote to click away from ads just as they would with any other Short,” Google added.