YouTube Is Testing A New Means To Prevent Ad Skipping And It Involves Hiding The ‘Skip’ Button

Video streaming giant YouTube is working on a new way to ensure users see ads and don’t skip them. This includes hiding the ‘Skip’ button option.

The free viewing experience that users have been benefiting from, thanks to the Skip button, could soon be disguised from user view. But if you’ve really got a problem with ads, the app is giving you the chance to pay extra and subscribe to Premium.

Google says ad monetization is one of the chief ways it makes money and helps creators get their rightful share. Hence, features like ad blockers have already made it hard for websites on the search engine to benefit and now the skip button is also hindering its monetization potential.

We can see this as a smart tactic to push marketing of its premium tier. Remember, so many viewers are complaining about how ad segments keep getting longer by the day. And if you can’t skip them, it just adds to a not-so-pleasurable experience.

The app has been very vocal about the ongoing debate against freeloaders who don’t want Premium and also don’t want to watch ads that help the company support its free services including streaming.

Google shared its dilemma on many platforms about how users are getting smarter with new extensions on browsers and ad blockers to hinder ads. This is why it might be forced to take on such drastic measures after all.

Another experiment had the app injecting ads inside video streams to stop any kind of blocking feature. And now this is coming into play as its next move to promote ads. It’s all thanks to one Reddit user who says they caught the app carrying out a test that hides the Skip button that users see once, after which you cannot skip the ad.

The placement is very smart as it’s out of the users’ reach and blocked by on-screen stickers. You can liken this to the sticker disguising skipping tips on POS machines.

As per the comments seen on that person’s Reddit thread, others were also confirming that they were seeing this take place and how it might be launched much sooner than expected. Who knows, this might be a limited test as the negative feedback is growing on the subject. And if you know the Android maker, it really does take users’ feedback into consideration.

It’s all going to remain a mystery for some time but we’ll keep you updated. Whatever the case may be, the thought of hiding the skip button is really extreme and it seems like Google is running out of options to hinder skipping ads.

What can be possibly worse is the app opting to delete the skipping ads button as a whole. Yikes, that would be a nightmare we feel. Do you agree?

Image: BigBlueMountainStar /Reddit

Comments

Apple In The Hotseat After Reviewer Confirms Its Vision Pro’s Eyesight Feature Doesn’t Work

For months, we’ve seen tech giant Apple speak about how its Vision Pro entails features that set it far apart from all others in the industry. Now, a reviewer is casting serious doubt on the iPhone maker’s claims after adding that one of the key features of the new Vision Pro Eyesight does not work. And that’s shocking considering how much Apple has marketed the product as one of the best in the industry. When you consider a wide array of real-life examples, you’ll find how Apple has always spoken about this technology being one of the best out there. But in reality, one reviewer says that’s far from the truth. CEO Tim Cook took out the time to argue about how AR is far more superior and entertaining than the world of VR. The former was better as it did not isolate individuals from the community arising around it. Moreover, this is where the entire EyeSight product range came into existence from this notion as it ensured users were well aware and engaged in everything in their su...

OpenAI Sets Eyes On New AI Project Worth Trillions As Sam Altman Begins Talks With Potential Investors

OpenAI has made it very clear that it’s not coming slow in terms of its ambitions for the year 2024. Sam Altman is said to be in talks with leading investors including the UAE government for a massive AI project that’s said to be worth trillions. This would entail the production of AI chips as confirmed by the WSJ in a new report. The CEO has yet to unveil the curtain on what exactly the project is all about and how it’s only in the early stages. Meanwhile, the list of investors taking part in this ordeal is still unknown, the company explained. Sam Altman also held similar discussions regarding the raising of funds for plans such as the production of a new plant with Japan and UAE-based investors such as their leading tech giants which include SoftBank Group and G42. It’s not too shocking as we’ve heard the OpenAI CEO mention time and time again how the world needs more AI chips now than ever. He feels they are designed to better enhance performance and assist in running AI mode...

The Arrival Of Gemini 1.5 - Google Unveils Its Latest Iteration Of Its Conversational AI System

Google just unveiled Gemini 1.5 , its latest rendition of the conversational AI system. The product is said to entail a greater array of advances in better efficiency, long-form reasoning, and enhanced performance. The latest system was detailed in a post by Google’s AI head that entailed a large figure of architecture enhancements, ensuring the core model can perform on the same level as the big Gemini 1.0 Ultra endeavor, without using extra computing resources. This latter was rolled out in the past week. The biggest leap comes at a time when there’s a huge window for carrying out experiments that the company says have to do with long-form context comprehension. The standard model of Gemini analyzes several prompts within a small 128k token context. With this new upgrade, the model will have a large number of data to process which can now be done quicker than before. This huge leap arose at a time when we saw the firm’s CEO analyze and classify as well as summarize a huge...

When it comes to instant messaging, there are only two major players in the game with all things having been considered and taken into account. The first is iMessage, which has a strong grip on the market due to the iPhone’s universal popularity in the US, and the other is the Meta owned WhatsApp. Apple’s messaging app clearly has a lead, but in spite of the fact that this is the case, WhatsApp has been making considerable ground as of late. With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that WhatsApp’s daily active users in America grew by 9% in 2023 . Its downloads also increased by 5% year over year , and it should be acknowledged that iPhone users are becoming especially amenable to giving it a try. Does this mean that WhatsApp might soon overtake iMessage in the future? Chart: Apptopia While Apple is quick to boast about iMessage being the very best messaging platform, it’s not available to Android users. That can be limiti...

Digital world

Search This Blog