YouTube’s major livestreaming revamp: Ads that don’t stop streams, simultaneous horizontal/vertical broadcasts, and more

Some of the biggest news to come out of YouTube‘s latest Made On event is the grand reveal of a livestreaming revamp–a revamp that will finally introduce some much-needed quality-of-life updates, including a major one for ads.

Over on Twitch, one of YouTube’s top livestreaming competitors (alongside TikTok and, to a lesser extent, Kick), pre-roll and mid-roll ads are a massive headache for both streamers and viewers.

Despite CEO Dan Clancy admitting pre-rolls are disruptive and can drive potential new viewers away, negatively impacting Twitch’s already difficult relationship with discoverability, nothing has changed.  It’s been two years since he made that comment, and people who decide to give a new-to-them livestreamer a chance still have to sit through at least one ad before being able to see the creator’s stream.

And even when a viewer makes it through pre-rolls, mid-rolls can pop up during inopportune moments: tense end-of-match virtual gunfights, the closing moves of a chess game, or while a streamer is telling a personal story.

Streamers and viewers have complained about these interruptions for years. To help mitigate them, Twitch introduced Stream Display Ads, aka banner ads that pop up for 15 seconds but don’t stop viewers from seeing and/or hearing the streamer. These ads seem to be more accepted by viewers, but they don’t offer the same punch to marketers as full-fledged, full-screen video ads.

So where’s the middle ground?

YouTube found it.

A core part of its revamp includes adding side-by-side ads. These are full-fledged video ads that will take up half of a user’s screen, while still showing the streamer and what they’re up to on the other half.

YouTube says it developed side-by-side ads because it knows “creators are often hesitant to run ads that interrupt key moments on their streams,” and it wanted “a less intrusive format for viewers, while helping creators get paid without pulling their audience away.”

YouTube is also addressing discoverability, a pain point for all streaming platforms, by adding three things:

• First and most importantly, simulstreaming across formats, which lets creators broadcast on YouTube in horizontal and vertical at the same time, “with a single unified chat room to bring the entire community together in one seamless experience,” it says.
• Next, it’s broad-releasing react live, a function that lets creators start a vertical livestream on mobile that reacts to current live events and/or streams from other creators. Think of it like TikTok dueting, only for livestreams. YouTube says the goal here is to “turn any stream into a shared event, letting creators of all sizes share commentary, analysis, and real time reactions.”
• Last up, it’s (predictably) doing more AI: A new tool will “find the most compelling comments from the livestream and automatically [create] ready-to-share Shorts.” Human clippers begone, we guess.

A few other updates:

• YouTube is tweaking Channel Memberships to allow creators to transition a stream from public to members-only mid-broadcast. That means they can lead with free content and change over for the juicy stuff, paywalling non-subscribers and potentially giving them an incentive to cough up membership dollars.
• Livestreamers can now practice with their full tech setup before actually going live on YouTube for all to see.
• And finally, YouTube is chasing the mobile game streaming craze by wrapping in Playables, its suite of low-commitment, second-screen-esque games. Streamers can now pick from 75+ games to play live, “while interacting with their audience through chat, and [monetizing] the stream like any other broadcast,” YouTube says.

“We know that livestreaming is hard work. It takes courage to push aside stage fright, skill to keep an audience engaged, and dedication to stay true to yourself while fostering connection in real time,” YouTube added in a company blog post. “But it’s work that pays off by building one of the most powerful things on the internet: a true community. This significant update, our most comprehensive yet, is a direct result of our commitment to making that work easier and more rewarding.”

This update goes a long way to pull YouTube’s livestream offering up alongside Twitch’s and TikTok’s–which is something it needed, considering it says over 30% of daily logged-in viewers watched live content in Q2 2025 alone. (We think these changes might also make Ludwig a little happy.)

We’re curious to see how this pays off for YouTube, which has been the most dominant entity in VODs and living room TV viewership for years now, but just hasn’t been able to catch up in streaming market share.

Yet.