YouTube first spoke about pause ads last year when it started trialing them in select regions. At the time, the company said that when you pause a video, it will shrink, and an ad will appear next to it.
“In Q1, we saw strong traction from the introduction of a pause ads pilot on connected TVs, a new non-interruptive ad format that appears when users pause their organic content,” Schindler noted. He went on to share that YouTube’s pause ads are “driving strong brand lift results” and “are commanding premium pricing from advertisers.”
Schindler didn’t share any timelines for when pause ads will start appearing on YouTube, but we know they’ll first roll out on smart TVs. The nature of these ads, including their duration, skippability, and more is still unclear. We also don’t know if Google plans to introduce these ads on YouTube’s mobile apps.
They're solving a couple of problems.
Content creators don't want to pay to host video, but want to be able to reach many people. Video hosting is bandwidth- and storage-heavy in comparison to most forms of content. Someone's gotta pay for it.
Some content creators want to be paid.
Many content viewers aren't willing to pay directly for video, but are willing to watch ads. That one's been around for a long time, with ad-supported TV and radio.
If you make a competitor that can solve those problems, it can compete with YouTube.
I think eventually, some people will be OK with paying 5 dollars per month for a YouTube competitor that is better than the original. Much like Kagi is doing for search engines. It won't be for the majority since they still expect free stuff and no ads, which doesn't work.
The service I get from YouTube is definitely worth what they're charging for YouTube Premium to me. I'd pay that today, given a lack of other options, but they aren't selling what I want, which is privacy. I don't want to pay them money and then just have them be able to link my financial data to whatever profile they're building based on me. I mean, I won't even use a YouTube account now. My Android phone isn't linked to a Google account. I don't particularly want paying for video service to take me down that route.
If they sold service that had a no-log, no-data-mining policy and I had some way to reasonably-reliably be sure that they aren't gonna change that underfoot, I'd go for it.
That being said, I'd imagine that privacy probably isn't what motivates the typical person who might pay them for service, so I don't know if there's enough of a market for them to offer something like that.
At the very least, it'd expose what the data-mining they're doing on someone is worth to the world, which might be considered a trade secret for a number of companies.
I'm not sure how this would work long term or if it would be any less annoying, but right now some content creators have ads within their content, like not YouTube ads but them just verbally promoting it. This could occur on peertube and is an option to still have a funding steam. It also allows creators to only have ads for things they are willing to support on their content. But it's also harder to skip and a bit annoying as a viewer so not sure if this has long term potential