YouTube ads: controversial YouTube midroll ads with a minimum of 8 minutes of video length

YouTube ads in midstream of the video (midroll ads) will be more common and they will always be activated by default.

YouTube ads with midroll ad-spots are the small spots in the middle of the video, for some they are very annoying, many they don’t care, and some block all ads anyway. Until now, a YouTube video had to be at least 10 minutes long before a creator was allowed to activate midroll ads on it and by default, midroll ads were deactivated (at least that was the case when I got ads 2 years ago), so it was an opt-in system.

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In the support pages for YouTube ads you can currently find a note that indicates that at the end of July, the requirements for YouTube midroll ads will be lowered to 8 minutes, and they will always be activated by default, unless the channel owner opts out:

Today, only videos longer than 10 minutes are eligible for mid-roll ads monetization. Starting in late July, videos longer than 8 minutes will be eligible for mid-roll ads. As part of this change, mid-roll ads will be turned on for all eligible existing videos and future video uploads, including those videos where you may have previously opted out of mid-roll ads. Videos that already have mid-roll ads turned on will not be impacted. If mid-roll ads are not a good fit for your videos, you can indicate this preference in YouTube Studio by July 27, 2020.

Mid-roll ads will be automatically placed at natural breaks in your videos to balance viewer experience and monetization potential for you. After these changes, you will still be able to turn mid-rolls off or adjust the placement in each video manually.

Today, only videos longer than 10 minutes are eligible for mid-roll ads. Starting in late July, videos longer than 8 minutes will be eligible for mid-roll ads. As part of this change, mid-roll ads will be turned on for all eligible existing videos and future video uploads, including those videos where you may have previously opted out of mid-roll ads. Videos that already have mid-roll ads turned on will not be impacted. If mid-roll ads are not a good fit for your videos, you can indicate this preference in YouTube Studio by July 27, 2020.

Mid-roll ads will be automatically placed at natural breaks in your videos to balance viewer experience and monetization potential for you. After these changes, you will still be able to turn mid-rolls off or adjust the placement in each video manually.

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6175006?hl=en

Email about the YouTube midroll ads to all creators who already have YouTube Monetization

A little later today an email was sent to all affected channel owners, in which YouTube explains this change in more detail and gives further details. They also talk about improved user experience, through automatically placed midroll ads and better revenue opportunities for the YouTubers:

Hello,

with this email we would like to inform you about changes to mid-roll ads that will affect your channel. The restrictions on videos where users can see mid-roll ads will be relaxed in the future. This may allow you to generate more revenue. Currently, mid-roll ads are limited to videos longer than 10 minutes.

However, as of the end of July, these ads will be available in all videos with a minimum length of 8 minutes. As part of this change, mid-roll ads will be enabled for all videos that are longer than 8 minutes. This includes videos for which mid-roll ads were previously disabled. Videos that already contain mid-roll ads are not affected.

For future uploads on channels with monetization, mid-roll ads will be enabled by default. Enabling mid-roll ads automatically saves Creatorn additional work and can also generate more revenue from new and existing content. We use machine learning to find natural pauses in your videos. Not only is this more user-friendly, it also increases your revenue potential.

If you don’t think your videos are suitable for mid-roll ads, you can adjust your settings in YouTube Studio until 27 July 2020. If you haven’t used this type of ad yet, you might want to try it. Even after the changes described above, you can still disable mid-roll ads or manually adjust their placement in each video at any time. For more information about these changes and about mid-roll ads, see this help article.

Best regards
The YouTube Team

Email to all YouTube Creators with activate Monetization

This will certainly make some things even different on YouTube. For one thing, Creator used to have to activate these midroll ads manually, which many didn’t do. And now they are switched on automatically everywhere, unless the channel operator switches them actively off, which many probably won’t do, just like in the first case. And then the number of videos that this affects will increase by a lot due to the lowered minimum video length.

Alternatives: Block YouTube advertising with AdBlocker, buy YouTube Premium or simply bear with it.

Users who use an AdBlocker to block YouTube ads will probably not notice any difference. And also for YouTube Premium users, nothing changes. But for everyone else, it will be more often “wait 5 seconds to skip ads”.

But always remember that your favorite YouTuber may use the revenue from these advertisements to buy his equipment, pay his rent or buy food for his family. And the more people block ads, the less income the content creators have and therefore the chance that there is permanently free content on the different platforms decreases. You can already see today with most newspapers and journals where too many ad blockers lead to.

Disadvantages of Adblockers for YouTube and the Web in general

Big news portals such as Spiegel, Time, or Süddeutsche Zeitung are nowadays almost unreadable for free because far more than half of the articles are only behind paywalls. And with smaller daily newspapers, as a bad example here our local newspaper, it has reached the point that you can hardly read any articles for free anymore.

So, blocking advertising is somehow your right, but remember, even journalists and YouTubers want to eat and live, and ad blockers gnaw at their income, maybe more than you think. So maybe at least turn off the blocker for those you love to watch and read.

Are you totally annoyed by advertising, do you block everything anyway or have you got so used to it that you won’t notice the difference? I look forward to your comments below.

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