YouTube usually adds more and more ads to its platform, but here’s something you don’t hear every day, it is cutting back on the ads on YouTube. YouTube has announced on a forum post that the company is doing away with the overlay ad format on the desktop version of YouTube.
Starting April 6, 2023, “Overlay ads” will not appear on YouTube videos and will not be available to turn on in your YouTube Studio console.
If you’re not familiar with the overlay ads, these ads appear on the desktop version of YouTube on the bottom side of the video as an overlay, obstructing the video on the screen. It could appear on most videos, and you can close it, but it still was an eyesore.
Jenson from Team YouTube mentioned, “These ads only appeared on the desktop, and we expect to see a limited impact for most creators as engagement shifts to other ad formats.”
YouTube hopes to improve the viewer experience and shift engagement to higher-performing ad formats on desktop and mobile.
Overlay ads have always been intrusive with it, appearing above the videos on YouTube, and it was only served on desktops. YouTube calls it “disruptive for viewers” and a “legacy ad format” on its forum post.
This ad format was not only annoying to viewers but also to the creators as the advertisers can choose to only pay for the ad when a user clicks on an ad. Even though the ad was showing up on a video you were watching, it was more likely that the creator wasn’t getting paid for the ad.