YouTube is going to remove some ad controls for creators

YouTube is making some notable changes to the ad controls available to creators. Beginning in November, YouTube is dropping individual ad controls in YouTube Studio for pre-roll, post-roll, skippable, and non-skippable ads on new videos, according to a support document from the company bylined by “Rob,” a member of the YouTube team.

Instead, creators will only be able to choose between having ads before or after a video on or off. If you choose to have those ads on, YouTube will choose whether to show pre-roll, post-roll, skippable, or non-skippable ads “when appropriate,” per a notice on another support document.

YouTube argues that this won’t be too big of a deal. “Most creators shouldn’t notice a change as they already have many of these ad formats turned on by default,” Rob said. “In the last year, for long-form videos that were enabled for monetization at time of publishing, more than 90 percent of videos had pre-roll, post-roll, skippable, and non-skippable ads turned on.” But for creators who want to have finer control over the types of ads their viewers might see, this upcoming change could come as a disappointment.

YouTube is also introducing a few new ad options for mid-roll ads. For live streams, creators will be able to see a 60-second countdown before an ad appears, with an option to skip that ad if they don’t want to interrupt the stream. Creators hosting live streams will also be able to delay mid-roll ads for 10 minutes. And in the coming months, with longform videos, YouTube says creators will be able to choose to have automated mid-roll ad breaks and manually selected ones; currently, you can only pick from one option or the other.