New ad format will bring unskippable 6-second ads to YouTube

Nobody likes ads, but they’re kind of the cost of doing business in a world where we’ve grown accustomed to getting our content for free. Although YouTube has long had ads before videos, Google is pushing out a new ad format called “Bumpers,” which are unskippable 6-second shorts placed in front of videos.

In the Adwords blog that announced the format, Product Manager Zach Lupei compares these Bumper ads to video haikus. Current ads placed before videos are often full-length ads that can be skipped after a few seconds. However, these ads have a hard cap of six seconds, making them more like Vine videos than traditional ads. Marketers will have to get pretty clever to squeeze meaningful, worthwhile content into that narrow window of time, so we might actually be getting some creative and hilarious little shorts out of this.

YouTube is aiming this app at mobile users, who tend to prefer “snackable” content, so you can expect these short-form ads to start hitting your smartphones and tablets sometime soon. However, you can always opt out of the ads by snagging a Google Play Music/YouTube Red subscription, which actually brings you a lot of bang for your buck. Let us know what you think of this new ad format in the ads below, and stay tuned to Android Authority for all the upcoming changes to the services you use every day.