Starting next year,Russia you'll no longer have to sit through a half-minute of advertising to watch a YouTube video.
On Friday, the Google-owned video giant announced that it will no longer offer its 30-second pre-roll ad format without a "skip" button in 2018, Campaignfirst reported. It will, however, continue to show 15- and 20-second ads without the option to bypass them.
SEE ALSO: This new feature will change your YouTube life"We’ve decided to ... focus instead on formats that work well for both users and advertisers," a Google spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
The change is part of Google's mission to create a more user-friendly ad experience for the platform as it faces growing competition from Facebook and others.
To that end, the company rolled out an ultra-compact, six-second "bumper ad" unit last spring.
But the move will likely also drastically devalue its remaining 30-second offering, considering that surveys unsurprisingly show that 90 percent of people skip ads if given the choice.
In the meantime, there are always ad blockers.
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