YouTube has officially given pause button adverts a wider rollout.
The video-sharing platform started piloting the feature in 2023 with a limited number of advertisers, and now they can appear any time you pause your screen.
“As we’ve seen both strong advertiser and strong viewer response, we’ve since widely rolled out pause ads to all advertisers,” YouTube comms manager Oluwa Falodun said in a statement to The Verse.
The company has claimed the pause ads are intended to offer a “less interruptive” experience for users.
However, they are yet to confirm or deny if the normal ads will now appear less often.
On an earnings call earlier this year, Google’s Philip Schindler revealed that the ads were driving strong results and “commanding premium pricing from advertisers.”
Meanwhile, YouTube has also unveiled some new AI-powered features for its content creators, which even integrates generative AI into Shorts.
Creators can use Google DeepMind’s Veo to generate six-second clips that can be merged into existing content.
Later in the year, Veo will be able to generate video backgrounds, while in 2025 YouTube will launch the standalone video clip feature.
For those consuming the content rather than creating it, YouTube will watermark all AI-generated content to make it clear to users what they are watching.
