This becomes even more obvious when Google tends to insert more and more forced ads on YouTube, causing users to not have the right to skip or to be skipped only after a few seconds.
For a free, open platform like YouTube, ads are the main source of revenue, so there’s no way you can ignore the annoyance they bring unless you’re willing to pay with a subscription. service called YouTube Premium.
While most ads are skippable, it requires you to pay attention to them and hit the skip button after 5 seconds. On the other hand, if you’re not paying close attention, you’ll easily see 15 to 30 seconds or more on each ad. Not to mention that YouTube’s advertising structure and policies are also constantly changing.
If you closely follow videos of varying lengths while watching YouTube without YouTube Premium, here’s the takeaway. First, the shorter the videos you watch, the more ads there will be. Second, the difference between short and long videos in terms of ad length isn’t as great as you might think, even as the number of videos increases.
Specifically for short videos, you will have to watch an average of about 90 seconds of ads per hour of content playback. If you watch longer videos, you’ll see ads that are about 35 seconds long. Of course you can still press the skip button on a case-by-case basis.
You can check your average YouTube usage by opening the YouTube app, tapping your profile icon, selecting “Time Watched” and reviewing the detailed chart here. Or you can estimate how long you watch YouTube based on your habits.
For example, you watch YouTube content for 2 hours a day. With 60 hours of content watching on YouTube per month, it’s reasonable to estimate that you watch at least 90 minutes of ads.
Therefore, if you are a YouTube lover and often spend a lot of time in your day listening to music and watching videos on this platform, you may consider subscribing to YouTube Premium.