If you thought that the current state of the Internet and advertisement in general is at a threshold already, then you may be surprised that companies like Google, Meta, Netflix, or Amazon don’t really think so.
Google seems to be one of the main driving forces behind ads. The advertising company that also operates a search engine, browser, and the YouTube website, announced last month that YouTube Premium Lite users would soon start seeing more ads.
The brunt of ads, however, is reserved for users who do not pay Google to see less or no ads. A report on Tech Issues suggests that Google is pushing it again on YouTube.
The site mentions two reports by YouTube users. The first is about the missing skip button on YouTube, which Google started to hide as early as October 2024. Google displayed a skip button when ads played in the past, but this appears to have changed for some users. No skip button means that you have to sit through the entire ad or ads before you can start watching the video.
The second new type of ad may even be more annoying. Since users only accept a number of ads on the site, Google thought it a good idea to add floating ads to videos.
The example given by a user on Reddit shows a small banner overlay on the video screen that promotes a seemingly unrelated channel on the site. To make matters worse, there does not appear to be an easy way to close that banner. Apparently, you need to click on the three-dots first before you can hide it again.
So, if you do use a content blocker, then there is a good chance that a rules update will hide this new form of advertisement on YouTube. However, depending on how you access YouTube, you may not be able to run a content blocker. For instance, if you use the official YouTube app, you can’t block ads that it displays easily. You can check out my guide on blocking most ads on Android for starters.
Now You: how do you handle ads on sites like YouTube? Do you block them? Feel free to leave a comment down below.
Obviously, three approaches when it comes to viewing YouTube videos:
1- Pay for, subscribe to the plan which allows not one advertisement;
2- Consider a content blocker if it has the power to block all ads though, “depending on how you access YouTube, you may not be able to run a content blocker”.
3- View YouTube videos by displaying them in their embedded format by a set of simple redirections. This has always been my choice but, given its power, not sure it’ll always work and I can easily imagine that sooner or later Google will block this approach one way or another.
Regarding floating ads specifically : the illustration if needed of business fixed on the obsession of “always more”. I’ve counted myself for decades now, no way i’ll count myself in.
Welcome to your dystopian future.
Easy to get around, at least in Firefox. Simply install “Behind The Overlay” which I use all the time: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/behind_the_overlay/