YouTube escalates war against Ad blockers with embedded ads
This new SSAI strategy has sent shockwaves through the ad blocker community, with some affected users taking subreddit to complain about the new feature.
The battle lines are drawn in the ongoing war between YouTube and ad blockers. The platform, a goldmine for user-generated content, relies heavily on ad revenue. But for many viewers, intrusive ads disrupt the viewing experience, leading them to turn to ad blockers.
YouTube, however, is not taking this lying down and is now experimenting with a Server-side ad injection (SSAI). This development was confirmed by the creator of SponsorBlock, a crowdsourced ad blocker, in a tweet last week.
This sneaky tactic embeds ads directly into videos on the server side, essentially making them part of the content itself. Unlike current methods that place ads on top of videos, viewers with ad blockers installed would still be unable to skip these embedded commercials.
With more than 2.70 billion monthly active users as of 2024, but only 100 million Premium subscribers, YouTube argues that these ad blockers hurt revenue, claiming that a majority of ad revenue goes to paying out creators. It urges viewers for some time to support their favourite creators and allow ads on YouTube or try YouTube Premium for an ad-free experience.
Emmanuel Oyedeji
This new SSAI strategy has sent shockwaves through the ad blocker community, with some affected users taking Subreddit to complain about the new feature. Others noted that the server-side ads disable playback controls when playing.
A global implementation of server-side ads for everyone could mean the end for ad-blocking tools with non-paying viewers having to watch more unskippable ads.
Meanwhile, Ad blocker developers believe they might be able to analyze data sent by YouTube to identify and skip these server-side ads. But this fix is unlikely to be immediate, potentially leaving viewers vulnerable to unskippable ads for an unforeseen period.
Emmanuel Oyedeji
