YouTube pause ads arrive - and the internet is furious

It's happened. YouTube has finally rolled out pause screen adverts as people have noticed them popping up on their screens.

This doesn't come as a huge surprise as the video-sharing platform did say they were piloting the feature with limited advertisements last year in what they described as "pause experiences".

Google Chief Business Officer Philipp Schindler noted how this new type of ad was successful for both advertisement companies and Google.

YouTube isn't the first platform to add pause screen ads as the streaming service Hulu introduced this to customers back in 2019.

“As we’ve seen both strong advertiser and strong viewer response, we’ve since widely rolled out Pause ads to all advertisers," YouTube comms manager Oluwa Falodun told The Verge about the success of the newest addition.

People recently began to notice the pause screen ads when watching videos on YouTube, and took to Reddit to post photos of what the ads look like and to question why they are seeing this.

And let's just say they're not happy with this update...

One person wrote: "WHY DOES AN AD POP UP EVERY TIME I PAUSE," and called it the "MOST ANNOYING 'FEATURE' (if you can even call it a feature) YET."

"Soon, there's gonna be an ad just for opening the app, just like cheap mobile games," another person said.

Someone else added: "Yeah I’ve been getting this too it’s unbelievable."

"Like bruh YouTube don’t you have enough ads already???" a fourth person commented.

Meanwhile, YouTube has also intensified its crackdown on those using adblockers on videos they watch to skip to the end or automatically mute when they play.

Sign up to our free indy100 weekly newsletter

How to join the indy100's free WhatsApp channel

Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.