YouTube is testing a new feature that could spell the end of ad blockers
YouTube has been battling ad blockers for a while now. We expected that it would be a game of cat and mouse that would essentially never end. YouTube would find a way to block these blockers, and ad blockers would eventually find a workaround. But in a new YouTube experiment, it could end ad blockers for good.
According to a post on X by SponsorBlock, YouTube is apparently experimenting with a new way of injecting ads into videos. This means that instead of going after ad blockers directly, YouTube is finding new ways of displaying ads that would be near impossible to block. This would be done by injecting ads into the video stream itself.
YouTube is currently experimenting with server-side ad injection. This means that the ad is being added directly into the video stream.
This breaks sponsorblock since now all timestamps are offset by the ad times.
— SponsorBlock (@sponsorblock@fosstodon.org) (@SponsorBlock) June 12, 2024
At the moment how ads on YouTube work is that they exist as separate elements. This means that the ad would play while the original video is paused. But by injecting ads directly into the video stream, it would make it a continuous video which would make it very difficult for ad blockers to try and block these ads.
At the moment this is an experiment so it isn’t fully rolled out yet, but we imagine that when it does, it could allow YouTube to finally put an end to ad blockers.