YouTube letting more creators have non-skippable ads

YouTube is about to begin giving the power to offer up non-skippable advertisements to a lot more of its creator community.

In the past, YouTube has only allowed a select few partners to turn on non-skippable ads, but that option will now be open to its entire YouTube Partner Program.

According to a video posted by YouTube’s Creator Insider, the non-skippable ads should provide creators with a little more ad money. The video, which was posted last week, said the wider rollout for the feature will kick off in about one week. Creators that are already monetizing video through YouTube’s skippable TrueView ads will have the option to go back and turn on non-skippable ads for those videos.

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Creator dashboards will also now include new analytics showing revenue breakdowns and audience engagement from non-skippable ads.

YouTube’s non-skippable video ad format can show up as pre-, mid-, or post-roll while viewing partner content. As of January 2018, non-skippable ads on desktop and mobile devices can be up to 15-20 seconds long (depending on where the viewer is based).

YouTube decides the best time to serve non-skippable video ads based on a range of signals, including content type and how a user discovered the video.

For users, the expanded access to non-skippable ads means many will have to wait longer than the typical five seconds before an ad can be skipped and a video can be viewed.

For YouTube, the growth in non-skippable ads comes after the platform has had to work to restore marketer confidence following concerns over ads playing in front of inappropriate content.

Earlier this year, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki said YouTube is using artificial intelligence and 10,000 staffers to identify offensive content.

“There is no playbook for how open platforms operate at our scale,” she said. “But it’s critical that we’re on the right side of history.”

In May, YouTube said 1.8 billion registered users were watching content on the platform each month, which is up from the 1.5 billion registered user stat YouTube shared in the middle of 2017.