YouTube is finally getting rid of an “old” feature that has probably been bothering users for quite some time now.
According to the Official YouTube forum site And report it Ars TechnicaYouTube will finally discontinue overlay ads starting April 6, 2023. Overlay ads, or the “legacy ad format” as the post refers to the feature, will no longer appear on YouTube videos or as an available ad format when you turn on ads in YouTube Studio”.
The post details that banner ads were only available in desktop mode and that they were “annoying to viewers”. YouTube believes this removal will have a limited impact on most creators as “engagement shifts to other ad formats”. This makes sense since creators only make money from overlay ads if a viewer clicks on them, and most likely a very small percentage actually do.
Why is that great
This is a great move by YouTube, not only because these ads are actually disabled because they blocked part of the screen but also because this is the first time YouTube has removed some type of ad.
It shows that the media giant is willing to care about what viewers want and proactively work on that. This leaves it open for YouTube to re-evaluate other ad types or even ad length and decide whether to drop those as well. For example, it could analyze what types of ads viewers tend to hit the skip button—an important metric because creators don’t get paid for ads on their videos if a viewer skips them—and then weed out that type of ads.
Regardless, strongly anti-consumer features should always be turned off. It would be nice if they weren’t offered in the first place, but it might be too much for the company to ask for.