You can skip to video in 5

Bao Dang, Staff ReporterOctober 15, 2020Leave a Comment

Advertisements are everywhere. It is in the newspaper, mail, email, television networks, tv interface (Samsung), basic phone applications (Samsung), the internet, etc. There is not a single day you don’t see ads unless you isolate yourself. Popular platforms such as YouTube are perfect hunting grounds for advertisers. Recent noticeable changes in YouTube’s ad policies have affected its users these past few months, with the increasing advertisements and the inability to skip them. Besides, these ads have misinformation.

Pre-roll, mid-roll, and misinformation in ads

YouTube has shown an increase in pre-roll ads (ads shown before the video) since August of this year. Users noticed many of pre-rolls to bundle in two or more at a time now and an

The race continues. Both parties are currently running ads as the deadline for voting is a month off. Since August, the amount of ads delivered by both sides has multiplied along with misinformation. “The opponents are going against each other and they form these teams and like make advertisements to make the other person look bad. So obviously there is going to be misinformation,” stated An Tran, a sophomore.

increase in their video length. In some instances, ads ranging from six to twenty seconds are not skippable. This action disturbed the experience of many viewers and with the presidential re-election occurring it fueled the flames of hatred towards advertisements.

The presidential re-election, now consisting of two players, Joe Biden and Donald Trump, led many ads to prompt the platform to catch voters. Both sides attack one another by taking video clips out of context and trying to sway voters to join a side.

In July of 2020, YouTube changed the requirement for having mid-roll ads from ten to eight minute videos. This increased the chances for many to encounter intrusive ads during the video.

Any lies? The debate continues with two sides in an ongoing ad warfare on YouTube. Ads these past few months were loaded with misinformation and many users are annoyed by it. “I was watching this one where they had him…it is like they said, ‘Biden is going to cut taxes,’ and it was just him saying that. And they cut it off of where they caught a video of him saying ‘I am going to defund the police,’…and they do the same for Trump too, and it’s annoying because people believe it,” said Katie Jones, a senior.

YouTube and many other platforms should try to take the responsibility to control, monitor, and review ads before dishing them out to viewers. Although content creators would enjoy their videos’ monetization, the content within some ads are very misleading. Especially now, during a time of high political tension where information is easily misinterpreted.