YouTube is testing a more aggressive approach to prevent ad blockers

YouTube is testing a more aggressive approach to prevent ad blockers. Since times are hard, belt-tightening is necessary.

In order to discourage viewers from using ad blockers while watching videos on its platform, YouTube is considering taking a more harsh stance. According to BleepingComputer, users have shared pictures of popup messages warning that their player will be stopped after three videos on social media sites like Reddit.

YouTube is testing a more aggressive approach to prevent ad blockers

The warning in question explains that YouTube will prevent you from watching videos on the platform unless the user deactivates their ad blocker or adds the site to their whitelist. The wording states, "Ads keep YouTube free for billions of users worldwide." To get rid of the ad, the company invites users to subscribe to the YouTube Premium subscription, so that “creators can continue to be paid”. Before that, YouTube only showed pop-ups to users with an ad blocker, reminding them that this is contrary to the site’s terms of use. The giant then added a timer to these warnings to ensure that users take the time to read the message.

Times are tough, we have to tighten the belt

The Mountain View firm has confirmed to BleepingComputer that this new alert is part of an experiment. A spokesman said YouTube “has a small global experiment to get users with active ad blockers to allow ads on YouTube or switch to YouTube Premium.” The company says it can temporarily disable playback “in the most extreme cases where users would continue to use their blocker”. The spokesman added that this action will only be taken “if users ignore multiple requests to allow YouTube ads”, without giving any further details.

For the time being, this approach seems to affect only a small number of users and YouTube has not indicated how many users and/or countries are involved. The site, which derives most of its revenue from advertising, has seen a drop in revenue over the past three quarters. It would not be surprising to see this test extended if the results prove good.