YouTube is reportedly developing another way to tackle third-party ad blockers, as the video streaming platform seeks to increase revenue from users who don’t have a YouTube Premium subscription. It is speculated that the change could combine video and ad streams, preventing popular browser plugins from blocking these ads. The development comes weeks after users reported that videos were automatically skipping to the end when using third-party ad blockers on Alphabet’s video streaming service.
YouTube reportedly combining video and ad streams
In a after On X (formerly Twitter), SponsorBlock, a plugin that skips sponsored sections of YouTube videos, claims that YouTube is inserting ads directly into the video stream. Currently, videos and ads are considered two separate elements. The player automatically pauses the video to show the ads at certain timestamps.
YouTube is currently experimenting with server-side ad injection. This means that the ad is added directly into the video stream.
This will break the sponsor block as all timestamps will now be shifted relative to the ad times.
— SponsorBlock (@sponsorblock@fosstodon.org) (@SponsorBlock) June 12, 2024
With this change, the video stream will be a continuous stream, meaning third-party ad blockers may no longer be able to block it, according to SponsorBlock. The open-source browser extension said it may not function properly if server-side ads are introduced, as “all timestamps are offset by the ad times.”
YouTube continues its crackdown on ad blockers
Users with adblockers enabled reported experiencing a different issue last month: videos started automatically skipping to the end. In the YouTube subreddit, one user reported being unable to watch videos with an adblocker enabled. The user also reportedly tried skipping to certain parts of the video, but it appeared the video automatically skipped to the end.
In some cases where some users were able to work around this issue, the audio playback would disappear. This meant that they could watch the video, but the audio would be missing.
There is speculation that this approach is part of YouTube’s “global effort” to crack down on adblockers. According to the video streaming platform, these programs, often presented as browser plugins, violate the terms of service of its API services.
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