Google has doubled down on its crackdown on ad-blockers in recent years, systematically closing nearly every loophole that once let users watch YouTube videos without ads.
However, there may still be ways to bypass the intrusive ads that interrupt live content without resorting to YouTube’s costly Premium subscription. The company recently announced that it will stop showing ads in livestreams if certain conditions are met.
According to the blog post shared by the video-sharing platform, its system can now detect when engagement in a livestream's chat is at its peak, then automatically skips ads for everyone watching.
YouTube highlighted multiple ways to boost engagement during livestreams, including letting viewers send gifts through both horizontal and vertical broadcasts from their mobile devices. Gifts are also being expanded to Canada, Korea, Indonesia, Thailand, Australia, and New Zealand.
To protect that collective vibe, our system now recognizes when Live Chat engagement is at its peak and automatically holds back ads for everyone. This helps you keep the momentum going for the whole community without being broken up by an ad. This also works only when you have automatic ads turned on
YouTube Product Manager for Live, Barbara Macdonald
Just this year, YouTube intentionally turned off comments and descriptions for some users with ad-blockers installed on their devices. This is on top of killing background play on third-party mobile browsers, preventing playback, and intentionally throttling videos for users with ad blockers.
Until now, it seemed like the only way around these issues was getting YouTube's $14/month Premium subscription plan, even though Google plans to hike the price to $16 as part of the company's plan to “continue improving Premium and support the creators and artists.” Alternatively, you can switch to privacy-focused browsers like Brave.
I guess this new engagement-focused method of blocking ads during livestreams makes it a third option, albeit for a very specific type of content. I'll take it.
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