YouTube Starts Showing Ads When You Pause Videos

Over the past few years or so, ads have become rampant on YouTube, which is a major concern for many consumers, considering that the platform offers the biggest video service, with very few notable competitors. This has become a nuisance for many, to the point that people have increasingly begun to resort to leveraging ad blockers, but YouTube cracks down regularly on such software through its ad blocker detection technology too. Now, the company has confirmed that it is rolling out another way to view ads, which is hopefully less intrusive.

In a statement to The Verge, YouTube's communication manager Oluwa Falodun confirmed that the company is broadly rolling out a new capability for all advertisers to show ads even when a viewer pauses their video. The decision for this widespread rollout is backed by an experiment that Google carried out with a smaller set of advertisers back in 2023. This experiment turned out to be considerably lucrative for Google, popular among advertisers, and apparently not intrusive enough for consumers.

While you could argue that pause ads are less intrusive than regular ads considering that you probably aren't actively paying attention to your screen when you pause it, but it is important to understand that YouTube has not committed to reducing regular ads in lieu of its latest change. You'll likely continue seeing regular ads along with pause ads, which means that the net result is still more advertisements.

Of course, users do have the option to subscribe to YouTube Premium and get rid of ads altogether, but the $13.99/month starting price point may be prohibitive for many.