Recently, I’ve started to find myself turning away from online streaming services due to how prevalent and irritating the ads have become. Unfortunately, YouTube is no different, having recently expanded how many ads we have to sit through in a video. And it looks like it's going to get even worse.
In its recent Brandcast presentation (via Android Authority), YouTube revealed a new ad product called “Peak Points.” According to the report, this new format utilizes Google Gemini to analyze YouTube videos to find the moments with the highest user engagement, and then suggests placing ads right after.
So, imagine for a moment that you’re watching highlights from your favorite show or game, perhaps that notorious scene from The Last of Us season 2. You get through that part and then are suddenly assaulted by an ad that completely breaks the immersion.
This isn’t the only new ad format being added, although the second one is a lot more palatable. Shoppable CTV is an e-commerce product feed where users can browse and purchase items during an ad. It’s still a kind of ad, but it’s much less annoying than being deliberately interrupted at the best parts of a video.
What are Point Peaks meant to accomplish?
Point Peaks aims to benefit advertisers by allowing the ads to appear at the point when users are most invested, which in turn means they better capture their attention. At a glance, it seems to be similar to a marketing strategy called emotion-based targeting. This is where advertisers place ads that align with the emotions evoked in the original content. The theory is that, in doing so, the ad has better retention among viewers, which in turn leads to better sales.
Personally, this feels much more disruptive than beneficial, and it risks turning away a lot of users. While the current ads are annoying, they’re usually clearly marked and don’t take away from the content. However, these ads aim to appear right at the zenith of your chosen video, which then completely ruins the experience.
There’s also no indication that the suggested ads will be emotionally aligned, which is a major point of the theory. As such, you could get a video for deodorant while watching moments from Netflix’s new romantic drama, “Forever.” We also don’t know if these ads can be skipped, or if they’ll replace the others at the start of the video. As such, they might just lead to people turning off the video or going to another one rather than finishing what they were watching.
What options do we, as viewers, have?
The biggest issue that faces viewers is that YouTube doesn’t really have any competition that we can turn to. As such, we’re forced to either find workarounds or pay money to avoid the ads.
You could try using one of the best ad blockers, but YouTube has been at war with those for a while now. For instance, last year, we saw the service have videos jump straight to the end if it detected an ad blocker. However, YouTube was adamant that it wasn’t an intentional action, and was instead a result of the ad blocker affecting a recent update.
Alternatively you could open your wallet and subscribe to YouTube Premium, which removes all ads as well as offering several other benefits depending on which plan you use. This isn’t a terrible option, mind, but its existence makes YouTube's constant push for more ads feel like a ploy to push users to subscribe.
For the time being, there are still a lot of unanswered questions regarding these new Peak Points ads. Unfortunately, we won’t really know how disruptive they’re going to be until we see them in practice. Until then, let us know what you think, and if this will finally be the push to get you to subscribe to YouTube Premium, or is this the final nail in the coffin for you?
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