YouTube is bringing short, unskippable ads that are meant to force young people to watch through them.
Called “Bumper ads”, Google says that the six-second videos are a direct response to the fact that people tend to click through ads as soon as they can.
Traditional YouTube videos can last up to a minute. But the site tends to give people the option to skip through after just a few seconds, forcing people to watch through just the beginning of a video and decide if they want to stick with it.
But people tended to skip through those videos while watching on mobile phones, according to Google. Half of people aged 18-49 tend to watch videos on their smartphone even if they’re at home and the ads are specifically targeted for those habits, Google said.
The new YouTube ads are much more successful in having people watch them, as well as remember and consider the products that they are being shown.
Companies will be able to start buying the ads from May, but some have already shown on YouTube during testing.
YouTube already rarely offers much longer unskippable ads, for which companies must pay considerably more. Those can last over a minute, but are very rare and appear to mostly show for people who are using adblockers.
