Viewers often pause their ongoing videos to carry out other tasks, and YouTube is trying to benefit from this habit of users. As it confirmed the implementation of Pause ads, pausing a YouTube video will now show you ads. These Pause ads are now widely rolling out in the YouTube App across various platforms, including its Smart TV app.
In a statement to The Verge, YouTube’s Communications Manager, Oluwa Falodun, shared that the platform has received a positive response to Pause ads from both advertisers and viewers. “We have now made Pause ads available to all advertisers,” Falodun confirmed.
The testing for Pause ads has been ongoing for a while now. Back in April this year, Google executive Philipp Schindler shared encouraging results from the experiment, describing Pause ads as a “non-interruptive” format that appears when viewers pause their content. However, it is still uncertain whether the broader implementation of Pause ads will reduce regular ad breaks during video playback.
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Reddit is full of threads with users sharing that they are seeing ads after they pause a video, not only on their Smart TVs but also on their smartphones, which confirms that YouTube is definitely in favour of Pause ads. To get rid of these ads, one can subscribe to YouTube Premium, the subscription prices for which were raised recently in India.
The YouTube Premium family membership, launched for Rs 189 a month, now costs Rs 299, accounting for a 58.2% price hike. The family plan allows users to share their subscription with five more family members. The individual Prepaid plan has increased from Rs 139/month to Rs 159/month. The Quarterly Prepaid plan for an individual, which costs Rs 399, now costs Rs 459. Finally, the annual plan that cost Rs 1,290 earlier now costs Rs 1,490.