Say goodbye to YouTube's long, unskippable ads starting next year

Say goodbye to YouTube's long, unskippable ads starting next year

Starting next year, you'll no longer have to sit through a half-minute of advertising to watch a YouTube video.

On Friday, the Google-owned video giant announced that it will no longer offer its 30-second pre-roll ad format without a "skip" button in 2018, Campaign first reported. It will, however, continue to show 15- and 20-second ads without the option to bypass them.

"We’ve decided to ... focus instead on formats that work well for both users and advertisers," a Google spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

The change is part of Google's mission to create a more user-friendly ad experience for the platform as it faces growing competition from Facebook and others.

To that end, the company rolled out an ultra-compact, six-second "bumper ad" unit last spring.

But the move will likely also drastically devalue its remaining 30-second offering, considering that surveys unsurprisingly show that 90 percent of people skip ads if given the choice. 

In the meantime, there are always ad blockers.