YouTube is the #1 streaming service on connected TVs, accounting for 10.4% of all television watch time. Every day, millions of people boot up the YouTube app on a TV set and watch over a billion hours of creator-made content on a living room-sized screen.
And YouTube is capitalizing on that watch time by introducing more unskippable ads–a format that, of course, appeals to brands, who can use it to command viewers’ attention for bigger chunks of time.
We here at Tubefilter noticed not just more unskippables, but longer unskippables rolling out earlier this month during our personal watch sessions, and we got reports from other folks that they were seeing the same thing. A source familiar with the matter told us YouTube is hitting up marketers, offering both 30-second and 60-second unskippable ads, with the minute-long ads specifically targeted for TVs.
Subscribe to get the latest creator news
So, we reached out to YouTube, which confirms more unskippable ad formats debuted alongside pause-vertising at the beginning of September. Both pause-vertising and CTV unskippables were announced well over a year ago, at Brandcast 2023, but are just now making their way onto viewers’ screens.
YouTube tells us it chose to introduce longer unskippables because it’s noticed that people don’t like frequent ad breaks, especially when they’re watching multiple videos for long periods of time. In fact, its data shows that 79% of viewers prefer to sit through one bigger ad break than deal with multiple ad breaks in one video. And since, like any other platform, YouTube wants people to watch for as long as possible, it’s doing its best to make that extended viewership as noninterruptive as possible.
“Based on this preference, we launched fewer, longer ad breaks, to create a more seamless viewing experience on the big screen,” a YouTube spokesperson tells us.
For now, it seems like viewers are seeing these ad breaks most frequently as 30-second spots, which YouTube says it’s serving in places where, before, it served two 15-second ads. It’s also serving six-second unskippables before and after videos. It didn’t comment on 60-second unskippables, which our source says are currently in beta, and can only be bought by reaching out to a Google Ads account team member. We haven’t seen those live on TVs yet, but based on this information, we expect to see them soon.
YouTube adds that the introduction of CTV unskippables is part of its ongoing effort to keep its platform’s ecosystem healthy by balancing monetization, growth, and user viewing experience. It also helpfully reminds us that anyone who doesn’t want to see unskippable ads can pay $13.99 a month for Premium.
Unskippable CTV ads are way less expensive than they used to be
Now we know what YouTube thinks about the direction it’s taking CTV ads, and we know what 79% of its users think, too.
What about what brands think? For that perspective, we went to marketing agency Pixability, which has been selling ads on YouTube since 2008. Theresa Go, the company’s Vice President of Responsible Media Solutions, tells us the brands Pixability works with really want to be on TVs.
Pixability “runs a really high % of ads on TV screens in general” versus ads served alongside YouTube content on desktop or mobile, she says (though the agency does say overall, a multiformat approach with CTV + desktop/mobile ads is key).
YouTube having unskippable ads appeals to these brands not only because they can command viewers’ attention for 30 or 60 seconds, but because they cost less than other formats. Jackie Mogol, Pixability’s Senior Vice President of Strategic Account Sales, says unskippable ads are now one of the most significantly cost-effective types of YouTube marketing out there, with an 87.84% decrease in CPM from 2019 to 2024.
“The average CPM in 2021 was $25,” she says. “Today it’s less than half of that.”
At the same time, the number of impressions generated by YouTube’s CTV ads has gone up 140% from 2019 to 2024, “as there’s a growing preference of watching content on the big screen, especially in the context of advertising,” she adds.
The “best case example” of that preference is the recent Olympic Games, Mogol says. YouTube previously revealed it scooped up 40 billion minutes of watch time during the Paris event, but didn’t break that viewership out into TV versus desktop/mobile. Pixability doesn’t have data on watch minutes, but did track views, and says gymnastics content alone got over 641 million views on TV screens.
“[B]rands can tap into that as we think about how the moment based content transcends borders and cultures,” Mogol says. “No other platform can deliver on that, at that clip, on the TV screen. It’s important to have intentional CTV investment in balance with Google offering different AI-powered ads in order to not miss out on this type of approach.”
Ultimately, “These efficiencies, combined with the vast reach of YouTube being the top streaming platform (as reported in Nielsen’s The Gauge at 10.4%), have provided our partners the flexibility to tap into the targeted and engaging audience that traditional living room experiences have offered,” Mogol says. “It’s also a way for traditionally minded CMOs to uncover the power that YouTube has for their brand as we think about precision at scale that I’d say is a hard one to rival.”
Mogol says that as Pixability gears up for winter holiday ad sales, longer, unskippable CTV ads on YouTube will be its “go to” for the bulk of its storytelling-based marketing. We’re betting it’s not alone, and that viewers will see more six, 30-, and 60-second unskippable ads in the coming months.
