Google is Getting Rid of Overlay Ads on YouTube

Google announced this week that it’s planning to retire overlay ads on YouTube starting on April 6. Overlay ads are the type of semi-transparent ads you may see at the bottom of some videos, and Google says that it’s getting rid of them to “improve the viewer experience and shift engagement to higher performing ad formats.”

In Google’s own admission, “overlay ads are a legacy ad format that only served on desktop and are disruptive for viewers.” The company says that it expects to “see limited impact for most Creators as engagement shifts to other ad formats.”

YouTube currently offers various advertising formats on YouTube: There are three different pre-roll ad formats including 6 seconds non-skippable ads (“bumper ads”), longer non-skippable video ads (up to 20 seconds), and video ads that can be skipped after 5 seconds. On videos that are longer than 8 minutes, you may also see mid-roll ads.

While there are many browser extensions for blocking ads on YouTube, Google would very much prefer if you paid for YouTube Premium, which offers an ad-free experience and other perks such as video downloads, background listening on mobile, and YouTube Music Premium. YouTube Premium is actually pretty good value, even though the Family plan recently got a price bump.