YouTube’s New Strategy: Making Ad Skipping Difficult

YouTube’s ad landscape might soon become a bit more challenging to navigate as the platform experiments with a redesigned ad skip button that’s not only smaller but also tougher to spot. With videos already featuring more ads, this change could intensify the struggle to swiftly skip through them.

The proposed alteration brings about a more inconspicuous skip button. YouTube confirms that it will be equipped with smaller text and enhanced transparency. Further contributing to its covert appearance, the button will adopt a curved shape, reflecting a contemporary touch. Notably, the word “Ads” will be rendered without capital letters, emphasizing its subtlety.

The visual representation of this new button highlights its inconspicuous nature, making it markedly harder to identify and utilize.

YouTube explains its motivation for this redesign:

“We’re testing an update to the design of the ‘Skip Ads’ button across all platforms. Our goal is to provide a more consistent user experience in line with the updated look and feel on YouTube we announced last year.”

This “improved” button design holds the potential to enhance YouTube’s ad view rates, extend its reach, and elevate conversions, thereby augmenting the overall ad revenue generated by Google. The rationale behind this is simple: if the button doesn’t immediately catch users’ attention, they might be less inclined to skip the ads.

Thomas Eccel, an expert in Google Ads, echoes this sentiment:

“Spotted this really small ‘Skip ads’ button, seems like Google is testing this new button. It has a new format and is way smaller than the normal ‘skip’ box. If this gets rolled out, it will affect the view rate and the spend of the campaigns.”

Nevertheless, there’s a glimmer of hope amidst this change. As of now, this feature is being tested and may never be released to the public. Furthermore, it remains uncertain when and if it will be accessible to all YouTube users.