YouTube administration continues its war against ad blockers and this time strikes at the tools that allow watching videos on mobile devices without showing ads.
The service announced that it is "strengthening [its] measures against third-party applications that violate" its Terms of Service, "in particular applications that block ads." This concerns mobile applications that allow watching videos without interruptions for ads. When using such applications, users may experience buffering issues or see an error message "This content is not available in this application."
YouTube reminds that its Terms of Service do not allow third-party applications to disable ads, "as this prevents the author from getting rewarded for views." As in the past few months, since the fight against ad blockers began, YouTube offers to subscribe to Premium access if users want to watch videos without ads. YouTube Premium in Ukraine costs 99 UAH per month. Separate plans are also offered for family subscriptions (149 UAH per month for access for up to 6 users over 13 years old) or students (59 UAH per month).
In November of last year, YouTube announced that it was "initiating global efforts to encourage viewers who have ad blockers enabled to allow ads on YouTube or try YouTube Premium to experience ad-free content." This began with pop-ups appearing every time an ad blocker is used, with a message stating that this goes against the site's Terms of Service. Soon after, a restriction was placed where only three videos could be watched with an ad blocker enabled, after which the ability to view subsequent videos was limited. Subsequently, Google stated that users with ad blockers installed "may encounter suboptimal viewing experiences," such as having to wait longer for the video to load.
Additionally, YouTube is considering showing ads when a user pauses a video. Testing of this feature began back in May last year, and the results turned out to be quite good.
Source: engadget
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