Now, in a first, YouTube is looking to ban the use of ad-blockers—which restrict advertising revenue for the company—and reduce the amount creators take home.
YouTube is undoubtedly one of the go-to places for people to consume content, and most of the creators making a living on the platform do so thanks to the presence of ads.
According to a report, YouTube is testing an ad-blocker blocking feature.
While browsing YouTube, a user on Reddit saw a popup that said, “Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube." The popup also offered an easy way to sign up for YouTube Premium, which is a paid ad-free experience. It highlighted that ads allow billions of users to enjoy YouTube for free and asked the Reddit user to “Allow YouTube ads" in their ad-blocking software.
Later, the YouTube team confirmed that this is a limited test. So far, only a single report of the test has come out, but it is more than likely that YouTube could be looking to solve the ad-blocker menace once and for all, as it affects the revenue for both the company and creators.
Google would very much like to push more YouTube users to subscribe to YouTube Premium, which offers ad-free viewing and other perks such as video downloads and background listening on mobile. With YouTube Music Premium included at no additional cost, YouTube Premium is actually pretty good value at $11.99/month. Back in November, Google announced that YouTube Premium and YouTube Music now had a combined subscriber base of 80 million people.
The push towards YouTube Premium could help maintain this accelerated membership growth rate. As the platform has made ads increasingly longer and some unskippable over the years, an ad-free experience via YouTube Premium is looking more appealing to users.
