YouTube Tweaks Ad Policy, Miffing Creators Who Now Can't Choose If Their Ads Will Be Skippable

Yet another streaming platform has tweaked its policies in an apparent effort to maximize profits, much to the chagrin of the creators who have to deal with those policies. This time, however, the culprit isn't Twitch, it's YouTube.

Yesterday, the platform announced it was making changes to creators' control over the ads shown before, after and during their videos. A tweet from the YouTube Analytics account laid out the changes, including that creators will no longer be able to control whether ads that show up with their videos are skippable.

Creators can now only control whether their video has ads and when they'll be shown in the middle of a video. When livestreaming, they will see a 60-second countdown alerting them that an ad is about to appear, and they can choose whether or not to skip showing an ad to their viewers.

A full blog post from Google about the changes lays out that they will begin going into effect in November.

The post also says that YouTube doesn't believe the changes will harm most creators' audience retention and revenue, writing:

In an experiment in the first half of 2023, we observed that creators who had non-skippable ads enabled in addition to multiple combinations of all other ad formats saw an average of over 5% greater YouTube ad revenue, and a <1% decrease in watch time compared to creators who did not have non-skippable ads enabled. In the same experiment, we also observed that creators who had pre-roll ads enabled in addition to multiple combinations of all other ad formats saw an average of over 15% greater YouTube ad revenue, and a <5% decrease in watch time compared to creators who did not have pre-roll ads enabled.

While YouTube's citation of statistics attempted to quell creator concerns about revenue and viewer retention, many YouTubers expressed that they didn't appreciate having their control over advertisements taken away. Granted, some were further outraged because of an inaccurate Dexerto tweet that stated YouTubers will no longer have control over when mid-video ads play, though that is not the case.

Historically, creator backlash has made both YouTube and Twitch walk back controversial changes, so it remains to be seen if the new ad policy guidelines will in fact go into effect in November or if YouTube will determine if the backlash is too great.