Starting April 6, YouTube will be discontinuing “overlay” ads. The platform recognizes that these small banners appearing at the bottom of the video tarnish the user experience.
YouTube wants to relieve its viewers, already very (some would say too much) solicited by advertising. As of April 6, the video streaming platform will abandon its “overlay” ads, mainly visible on the browser version of YouTube. Displayed as little pop-up banners at the bottom of videos being played, these are now deemed annoying…enough to “ disturb the spectators“, admits YouTube in a public note shared on March 6.
As specified9to5Google, these banners had already been removed from mobile versions of YouTube, in favor of video ads (which can often be skipped) added before, during or after playback. The change announced by YouTube will therefore not be visible when you watch videos on your smartphone or tablet.
YouTube plans to focus on other more modern advertising formats
“Starting April 6, 2023, the ‘Overlay ads’ ad format will no longer appear on YouTube to improve the viewer experience and shift engagement to better performing ad formats on desktop and mobile devices“says YouTube. “Overlay ads are an old ad format, only served on desktops and confusing viewers“, we read.
Example of overlay advertising on YouTube // Source: YouTube
In detail, YouTube explains that this decision will only have a limited impact for most creators. The platform intends to “catch up” with other, more modern and less intrusive advertising formats.
Starting next month, however, creators looking to monetize their videos on YouTube’s desktop interface will no longer have access to the “Overlay ads” option in YouTube Studio. Instead, Google could in the future fall back on a new feature allowing products to be “tagged” directly in videos.
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