YouTube ad blockers have failed as users have been shown blank adverts or black screens before a video, rather than skipping the ads completely.
Users have taken to social media to highlight the issue with the video platform’s ad blocker, which appears to have started since the tech firm made changes to stop users skipping adverts.
Discussing the issue on the Reddit channel r/youtube, one commenter said that being forced to look at a black screen was “still better than seeing a horrible ad”.
Another said they had tried several ad blockers but all had resulted in the same problem, with others suggesting refreshing the page worked as a temporary fix.
The issue is the latest in a series of problems which have occurred in recent recent months, with YouTube users previously complaining about issues such as no sound after using an ad blocker.
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YouTube’s advertising revenue for Q2 of 2024 was £7.74bn, a 13% rise on the year before.
The platform offers subscribers a premium service for £12.59 a month, but those who run crowd-sourced extensions have said that the platform had been adding adverts “directly into the video stream”, which means adverts are able to bypass traditional ad blockers.
YouTube is currently experimenting with server-side ad injection. This means that the ad is being added directly into the video stream.
This breaks sponsorblock since now all timestamps are offset by the ad times.
— SponsorBlock (and DeArrow) (@SponsorBlock) June 12, 2024
Platforms that have previously introduced ad-free tiers include Amazon Prime, while streaming services Disney and Netflix have both introduced cheaper tiers with ads.
While advertising is becoming an increasingly important revenue stream in the streaming sector, it coincides with more challenging times for traditional broadcast advertising.
