YouTube To Eliminate The 30 Second Ad

Well here’s a bit of good news. I know that most of us hate sitting through even the skippable 5 second pre-roll commercials that run before YouTube videos, let alone the 15 second ones that you have to watch all the way through. What’s even worse though, is having to watch a full 30 second ad that you can’t skip and seems to go on forever. It looks like YouTube now agrees with us as it recently stated that it will no longer allow 30 second un-skippable ads as of 2018.

The fact of the matter is that most people grow frustrated after about 10 seconds of an ad and leave for something else, especially if a timer tells them how much time is left. While that might be a factor, most observers feel that this decision isn’t based on users react to being held captive by an ad. They believe that the real reason that YouTube is taking these steps is because it’s fear of Facebook, which has recently revealed that it will soon only allow ads after a video has run for at least 30 seconds. That means no pre-roll ads, which I think will be a big selling point for users watching Facebook videos going forward.

That said, YouTube will still continue to have un-skippable ads, they just won’t be as long as 30 seconds. YouTube’s options for advertisers include ads that can only be skipped after five seconds, as well as un-skippable ads that run for 15 or 20 seconds. It also offers un-skippable bumper-style ads of up to six seconds.

Believe it or not, Google has said that those long video ads deliver results for advertisers even when users are able to skip the ads. Viewers who watched skippable ads all the way through, or for the full 30 seconds, were 23 times more likely to visit the advertiser’s channel and subscribe, and 10 times more likely to engage with it.

So even while they’ve been effective, the 30 second ad will soon become extinct on YouTube. 2018 can’t get here fast enough.