In 2018, YouTube Will Stop Showing 30-Second Unskippable Ads

Beginning in 2018, YouTube will no longer show users unskippable, 30-second ads.

“We’re committed to providing a better ads experience for users online,” a Google spokesperson told The Drum. “As part of that, we’ve decided to stop supporting 30-second unskippable ads as of 2018 and focus instead on formats that work well for both users and advertisers.”

That said, YouTube will still offer 20-second unskippable ads and 6-second unskippable Bumper ads — a format it unveiled last April. At the time, YouTube said Bumper ads were ideally suited to the kinds of “snackable videos” succeeding across mobile devices today, noting, “We like to think of Bumper ads as little haikus of video ads.”

As attention spans around digital video consumption continue to plummet, the fact that YouTube is abandoning 30-second ads means that marketers will no longer simply be able to re-purpose television commercials for online use, reports The Drum.

Eva Tuckman, the PPC director at digital ad agency Roast, told The Drum that she also sees the move away from 30-second ads as an attempt by YouTube to keep viewers engaged as video consumption on Facebook — which is testing mid-roll ads that appear 20 seconds after videos have launched — continues to explode.