Google makes the majority of its money through ads. That’s not an industry secret. Since YouTube is a Google product with no admission fee, it is also not surprising that ads are the primary revenue source for YouTube. That explains why YouTube always takes anything that has to do with ads extra seriously.
There’s yet another ad-related change coming to YouTube, particularly on mobile, and this is one that seems solely intended to benefit the advertisers. The countdown timer for the button to skip ads is gone, sort of forcing you to focus on the ad itself.
Google Has Chosen To Remove The Skip Button Timer On YouTube For Mobile
If you’re not subscribed to YouTube Premium and you don’t have an ad-blocker installed on your device, you have no choice but to endure the numerous ads that YouTube throws in your face when you’re attempting to watch content. To be honest, you don’t have much of a choice since that’s how Google gets paid by you—they offer Premium if you can’t deal with the stress.
Unfortunately, YouTube loves its ads and a lot of the changes being pushed out to the platform have something to do with ads. There’s a new change that has been noticed by the folks over at Android Police and it’s definitely going to stir a few feathers among users.
Do you know how you can usually see a little countdown timer that tells you when the “Skip” button for ads will become available to be pressed? Well, that’s gone now. It doesn’t mean that you can’t skip ads; it just means you won’t be able to see the timer that indicates when you can, and for many, that’s bound to be rather annoying.
Google Wants You To Actually Watch The Ads Instead Of Watching The Skip Button
If I’m to guess why I think Google decided to do this, it is because it wants to provide more value to its advertisers. Google wants to make sure viewers have to at least pay some degree of attention to ads—it’s the whole reason behind unskippable ads—you’re sort of forced to watch them. When there’s no countdown timer to keep your eye on, you’re simply going to have to pay attention to the ad itself, until that skip button shows.
However, you technically can still see when the skip button will appear thanks to the yellow playback bar at the bottom of the ad. Once that is filled out, the skip button will pop up, even if the ad still has a lot more to show you.
At the moment, you might not notice this change yet as it seems Google is still testing it among a limited group of devices. It could be scrapped in the end but it could also be set in stone.
I Can’t Blame YouTube But They Might Need To Relax
There’s no platform that can take YouTube’s crown overnight. I also understand that the platform makes its money from ads. However, the team seems to get way too excited when it comes to anything related to ads.
The idea might be to push users to YouTube Premium instead of forcing them to watch ads, but with a recent price increase and other pro-ad tactics, YouTube might slowly be pushing people away instead of bringing them in.
