This approach bears resemblance to what we’ve observed from Netflix, though its success remains to be seen. Interestingly, even YouTube expresses uncertainty about the outcome, indicating that the service will be accessible until March 28, 2024, at which point a decision will likely be made regarding the continuation of the Playables feature. So the future of Playables really just depends on how much people like it up until March 2024.
This news comes shortly after the video-sharing platform’s massive crackdown against ad blockers all over the world. The crackdown forced many to switch off their ad blockers, but many simply switched to better alternatives that were able to bypass YouTube’s ban. Meanwhile, some ad blockers simply just speed through the ads without skipping them.
More recently, some users also speculated that Google is punishing ad-block users by slowing down loading times on certain browsers. A Reddit user shared a video showing how every video was taking 5 seconds before it would start loading. The Redditor even went as far as investigating whether it was an internet browser issue, but there were no problems to be seen there.
