Google found a way to bypass Adblock in YouTube

Adblock has been a life-saver to many web advertising critics out there. This software makes publicity disappear in most websites, but the problem with a cleaner internet is that those running these pages have found themselves affected by lower revenues. Pagefair’s studies corroborate that about 144 million users take advantage of Adblock as of the end of 2014, which accounts for about 5% of the whole internet community. This would seem like a small number, but since these numbers are mostly concentrated in western markets, profits have seen a significant impact.

To put it into perspective, about 27.6 of the surveyed USA-based participants claimed to use the ad-blocking services. This likely also means that over a fourth of the possible earnings are being stripped away from online businesses, which often depend on advertising. Of course, Google and some of its services is also going to see a negative effect from such services, so they have decided to take action. A bevy of online reports tell us the Search Giant has found a way to bypass Adblock’s effects in YouTube.

According to these reports, YouTube is now treating video ads as pre-clips, making it impossible to avoid them. The most interesting part is that it seems those with Adblock services activated will be worse off, as the option to skip the video will not be present for them. This can be a huge disadvantage considering some ads can run for multiple minutes. Those who want to skip videos will have to either white-list YouTube or disable Adblock services. And yes, it seems like these changes don’t only affect Adblock users, but also those who utilize similar software.

Obviously, there will be some workarounds the internet will find, but this is a clear move against ad-blockers from Google. What do you guys think about this whole situation? Are you an Adblock supporter? If so, what is your reasoning. Hit the comments and let us know where you stand on this. Will you be affected by these changes?