Next Month, YouTube Will Remove Overlay Ad Format Protested By Many Users

JAKARTA - YouTube will soon get rid of overlay ads that often appear when videos are playing. This feature often obscures parts of the video when users are watching, and that's quite annoying.

Overlay ads usually appear at the bottom of the video and cover most of the view when the user is watching on a desktop or browser.

Due to several complaints from users regarding this often annoying feature, it finally caught Google's attention and they are trying to make some changes to ad placement.

Via YouTube's Help Forum page, the company confirmed that legacy ad formats, which include overlays, will no longer appear on the platform.

"Starting April 6, 2023, the overlay ad format will no longer appear on YouTube to help improve the viewer experience and shift engagement to higher performing ad formats on desktop and mobile," YouTube said.

"Overlay ads are an older ad format that only served on desktops and were annoying to viewers. We expect to see a limited impact for most Creators as engagement shifts to other ad formats," he added.

Ads of this kind were removed from mobile apps a few years ago and replaced with ad formats such as pre-mid and post-roll ads. In most cases, users can skip these types of ads.

The new measure will ensure users can enjoy the platform without annoying ads. However, YouTube emphasizes that removing overlay ads will have a limited impact on content creators' ad revenue.

But the company will shift focus to other ad formats to overcome the impact, as quoted from GizChina, Thursday, March 5.

Creators will no longer be able to enable or add overlay ads when accessing monetization options in YouTube Studio.

The company hasn't mentioned what type of ads they plan to implement instead of overlay ads. For now, creators can use other ad formats including the new product tagging feature.

It should be noted, overlay ads are only available on the desktop version which makes up a small portion of YouTube's audience. Therefore, the revenue impact will not be seen.