Has this ever happened to you? You're totally invested in a video—maybe the punchline to a great joke is about to hit, or you're finally about to learn the answer to some big mystery—and right as it's getting good, bam: an annoying ad grinds everything to a disappointing halt.
Ads are a necessary element of the free internet, but that doesn't excuse how irritating they can be. Nobody wants an ad to cut them off from a video right as the interest levels are peaking—though that's exactly what's going to happen on all of your YouTube videos.
As reported by Mashable, it's all part of a new feature called Peak Points, which YouTube announced during its Upfront presentation on Wednesday. Peak Points employs Google's AI model Gemini to find "the most meaningful, or 'peak,' moments" to interrupt a video with ads. It's not clear what data Gemini will use to make its determinations, but assume your behaviors are being watched by Google's AI whenever you tune into a YouTube video.
YouTube knows that viewers are going to be most invested in the video during these points, and by strategically placing ads there, the chances are higher that a viewer will engage with that ad—making more money for both YouTube and the creator. And there's some logic there. But it also means that ad placement on YouTube videos is about to get really annoying. Every interesting, funny, frustrating, or otherwise emotional video on the site is going to have ads placed at their "peak." I wouldn't be surprised if, after a while, you could simply sense these ad breaks coming.
Getting around annoying YouTube ads
There are a couple of workarounds to this. YouTube's solution, of course, is to subscribe to YouTube Premium. For $13.99 per month, you can watch videos largely ad-free, among other subscriber-only perks. On the other hand, you could use an ad blocker to, well, block these ads. YouTube can employ any AI model it wants to place ads in the most strategic moments possible, but it'll be in vain if you simply block those ads from appearing.
The situation, however, is not quite as simple as it once was. YouTube and Google have gone to war against ad blockers, neutering popular options like uBlock Origin on Chrome, and finding new ways to stop users who are using ad blockers from watching YouTube. Even still, there are always ways around YouTube's tactics.
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