YouTube has a lot of ads. So many, in fact, that you might wonder if owner Google is using the prevalence and annoyance of advertising to not-so-subtly get people paying for YouTube Premium. Lots of users block those ads—and I get it—but of course Google would prefer that they don’t. Now YouTube is annoying even more users that are blocking ads… in a possible prelude to even more aggressive moves.
Late last week and over the weekend, users in laptop and desktop browsers (including yours truly) started seeing pop-ups on YouTube discouraging them from blocking ads and/or encouraging a paid subscription to YouTube Premium. It’s not surprising to anyone that Google isn’t a fan of ad blocking, but the message between the lines might just be “we can tell you’re blocking ads, and we can just shut off your access to the de facto home of video on the web if you keep doing it.” There’s a growing trend of otherwise free ad-supported websites detecting ad blockers and shutting off access if they’re employed.
This isn’t the first time Google has tested the waters and pushed back against YouTube users who block ads. Other short-term tests have simply blacked out videos if an ad blocker is detected, baked advertisements into a hard-coded version of the video, etc. In Google’s defense, it’s also experimented in cheaper variants of the Premium service… which don’t turn off ads for all videos and don’t include useful mobile features like background listening and offline downloads. The value proposition still doesn’t make sense for me.
A little testing this morning shows that multiple browser and ad blocking extension combinations are no longer showing the pop-up, so either Google has ended a relatively short-term test or the ad blocking companies have already gotten around the new system. Either way, it seems like the tension between YouTube users and advertisers isn’t going anywhere soon.