YouTube is introducing a new feature that will allow users to skip sponsored segments in videos, but this feature will only be available to YouTube Premium users.
Many of the YouTube videos you watch are sponsored by brands. You’ll often see them promoting creators like Mr Beast, who has recently been accused of using “unlicensed” tactics to get users to watch their videos to the end.
These sponsored segments are between 30 seconds and 2 minutes long, but now YouTube is introducing the ability to skip these segments as long as you pay for YouTube Premium.
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It’s very easy to use: when you’re watching a video and you see a creator talking about a sponsor, double-tap the screen, and a “Go Forward” button will appear, allowing you to skip the ad. However, it doesn’t appear in all sponsored segments.
I tried the skip feature on sponsored segments in videos from Linus Tech Tips and Chris Stuckmann and it worked fine, but when I tried it on an ad in one of PewDiePie’s videos, the “go ahead” button didn’t appear.
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YouTube hasn’t revealed specifically how this works, but it appears to be based on data from other users. If a lot of people skip a part of the video, like in the Linus Tech Tips video, the option to jump ahead appears. If the user doesn’t skip the ad, the option doesn’t appear. It appears to work using crowdsourced information based on video statistics.
“Jump ahead” typically doesn’t show if the ad is near the end of a video because people have usually finished the video at that point. Dexerto has reached out to Google for clarification.
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The new feature comes shortly after the video-sharing platform introduced an AI chatbot to help creators recover their hacked accounts.
While the “jump ahead” feature is great for YouTube viewers, it may not be so great for creators who rely on sponsorships. While it’s too early to tell, allowing users to skip sponsored segments could result in advertisers spending less.
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