YouTube ads now more annoying and obtrusive than ever on TVs (Updated)

Update, November 22, 2019 (10:48 AM ET): Yesterday, Google announced that after months of testing, masthead ads are officially rolling out to the YouTube app for TVs. To test this new ad space, the company has been working with the likes of Fox to promote its latest TV show — The Masked Singer. Apparently, Fox has seen some success in the past month using these masthead ads.

Now, companies around the world can purchase this ad space as a part of their marketing campaigns. This is great news for advertisers, but not so much for consumers.

Original Article: November 19, 2019 (12:05 PM ET): Do you watch YouTube on your TV? Do you love intrusive ads? Well, hopefully, you said yes to both of those, because the YouTube app for TV is about to feature a giant ad across the top of the front page.

YouTube calls this the YouTube masthead, and it currently exists on the standard YouTube website. The Verge reports that the masthead is considered a prime advertisement slot, and companies are willing to pay big bucks to showcase their advertisements there.

This is especially true since the daily watch time for YouTube is about 250 million hours. On top of that, Google claims that people remember ads on the YouTube app more than ads on traditional TV, and the masthead ads will autoplay for viewers after a few seconds on certain devices. That means these ads probably aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Read also: Verizon partners with YouTube TV, a move T-Mobile should have made

YouTube is also making another change to the service, though admittedly a slightly less annoying one. Soon, users will no longer be able to use YouTube.com/tv to access the service’s TV-centric UI. Subscribers will need to use one of the dedicated YouTube apps to continue watching.

If you use the YouTube app on your TV, you should see the new masthead pop-up any time now.