The Impact of YouTube’s Crackdown on Ad Blockers on Users

According to multiple users on social media, YouTube may display a black screen for a maximum of 30 seconds when an ad blocker is being used.

Despite facing challenges from ad blockers, YouTube, owned by Google, continues to strive for more users to subscribe to its Premium service. Nevertheless, some users are still finding ways to avoid paying and bypass ads by using ad blockers.

Over the past few years, YouTube has been making significant efforts to render ad blockers useless, and its most recent action could be the ultimate blow.

In June, we announced that YouTube had plans to use server-side ads in order to combat ad blockers. It appears that the video-sharing platform has now successfully implemented this strategy. As a result, viewers may experience 6 to 30 seconds of blank space during ad breaks.

Redditors OreOfChlorophyte and JazzlikeJackfruit372 have both observed a maximum of 31 seconds of a black screen while watching YouTube videos with uBlock Origin, an ad blocker, enabled.

According to OreOfChlorophyte, the black screen labeled as “unskippable nothingness”may be caused by ads injected by YouTube on the server side. Due to the efforts of ad blockers to block these ads, users are left with a black screen.

Looks like Youtube started injecting ads directly into the video stream byu/OreOfChlorophyte inyoutube

Server-side ad injection refers to the delivery of ads directly from the server that is hosting the content. Typically, YouTube utilizes scripts to add ads to your device, which can be detected and blocked by ad blockers.

Despite this, YouTube employs server-side ad injection which integrates ads into the content before it reaches your device. As a result, it becomes significantly more challenging for ad blockers to remove them. This strategy is already utilized by Twitch, which explains why it is nearly impossible to avoid their ads when using ad blockers.

Earlier this year, YouTube announced that it would be taking action against ad blockers, which may result in buffering problems or errors for users who utilize these third-party applications. In May, several users reported that YouTube was penalizing individuals who used ad blockers by completely skipping over the video.

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