YouTube will stop overlay ads during videos from April

YouTube will no longer show overlay ads during videos starting April 6. According to the company, these ads are “disruptive.” The overlay ads are only shown on desktop and appear as a clickable banner at the bottom of the screen.

The red bar indicates an overlay ad
within a YouTube video

Overlay ads appear at the bottom of YouTube videos after a few seconds. The platform says stop showing these ads from April 6 to improve the user experience and ‘shift engagement to ad formats that perform better’.

The platform thinks that the financial impact for creators will remain small, because users would shift to those other ad formats. With the disappearance of the overlay ads, other ad formats on YouTube remain intact, such as the skippable and non-skipable video ads. Last year, the company experimented with showing more ads on TVs.