You might want to sit down for this news. YouTube is rolling out updates for livestreams that will result in fewer ads for viewers.
Yes, you heard right: YouTube is finding ways to have fewer ads.
That might come as a shock, considering YouTube has spent the past couple of years pushing more, longer ads–especially on TV screens. YouTube also just bumped up the price of Premium, its monthly subscription service where the biggest perk is no ads on videos. (The cheaper version of Premium got a bump, too, bringing it to $8.99/month.)
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But YouTube seems willing to sacrifice a battalion of the Adageddon (not to be confused with the Adpocalypse) if it means getting more creators and viewers to engage with livestreams.
YouTube has not historically put a lot of focus on livestreams; its bread and butter is long-form VODs and Shorts. That’s resulted in competitors like Twitch pulling ahead of its livestream capabilities and traffic.
These new features might help sharpen its edge, though. Both updates revolve around pausing ads for certain scenarios.
- When a viewer sends in a Super Chat, Super Sticker, or virtual gift, YouTube will pause ads specifically for that viewer. That way, if the creator says thank you, the viewer won’t miss it because an ad break is busy showing them KFC’s new bucket meals.
- YouTube’s system “now recognizes when Live Chat engagement is at its peak and automatically holds back ads for everyone.” The goal here is to help creators “keep the momentum going for the whole community,” it said in a company blog post.
Basically, if a viewer is willing to support a creator with their wallet, YouTube will reward them with a temporary period of no ads. (We’re not sure how long that period is.) And, if a creator is seeing lots of activity, everyone in chat gets rewarded with no ads.
Both are fresh entrants to the livestreaming space. On Twitch, for example, viewers must be subscribed to a creator’s channel or pay for Twitch Turbo to avoid ads; just giving Bits or gifting a sub isn’t enough. And while streamers and their mods can choose to skip a scheduled ad break if something important is going on, Twitch only allows three skips per stream, and doesn’t automatically turn off ads if a stream is poppin’.
The only concern here is whether creators’ earnings might dip because fewer ads are being shown. That shouldn’t be a problem with update #1, since viewers have to unlock personal ad-free-ness by directly paying the streamer with Chats and Stickers, but with update #2, will temporary ad pauses be frequent and/or long enough to result in revenue cuts?
We’ll keep an eye out on creator feedback as these features go live.
