YouTube is experimenting with a new method to serve ads in an attempt to make ad blockers obsolete. The platform is testing server-side ad injection, which inserts ads directly into the video stream. This creates a continuous stream of both the video content and the YouTube ads, making it more difficult for ad blockers to detect and block the ads.
Previously, YouTube served ads by pausing the video and displaying an advertisement as a separate piece of media. This allowed ad blockers to separate the ads from the video content and remove them from view. However, the new method of server-side injection complicates this process.
Despite the challenges, ad blocker extensions like SponsorBlock are exploring ways to work around YouTube’s new testing. SponsorBlock has implemented a block on all user submissions from browsers experiencing this YouTube experiment, but this is only a temporary solution if YouTube decides to roll out this feature more broadly.
This move by YouTube is the latest in a series of efforts to combat the use of ad blockers on the platform. In the past, YouTube has shown warning prompts to users detected using ad blockers and encouraged them to sign up for YouTube Premium, which removes ads from videos. The platform has also informed ad-blocker users that they may experience buffering or playback errors unless they deactivate their ad-blocking extension.
Read more: mashable.com