YouTube will start showing ads on the player screen when the video is paused. The feature became very popular among advertisers during testing. This was reported by The Verge.
Testing began in 2023 with a limited selection of advertisers. In April of this year, Google's Chief Commercial Officer Philip Schindler said that the new ad format was a big hit among advertising firms and profitable for Google.
Some Reddit users have already seen the new ads during the pause.
YouTube claims that paused ads are actually intended to offer a "less interruptive" user experience, but the company does not specify whether they will replace regular ads.