YouTube · Reviewed

Ads play before videos and repeat every minute

Raised by 204 people over 17 years (2010–2026), in 16 of them.

What people report

2010-12
the mandatory re-showing of the same ad when I try to skip forward, it's a piss poor user experience
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2021-02
Youtube is almost unusable without uBlock Origin or you have to call it Adstube.
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2023-06
With these ads I find YouTube unusable for any period of time.
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2024-01
YouTube doesn’t even finish loading the page for me but videos do start playing after 10 seconds or so.
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2026-07
I won't be able to see anything of the video unless I watch 15-60s of ads.
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Principle

User control and freedom (Nielsen)

People report that ads replay when they seek, arrive unskippable and in clusters, and no longer show how long they last, which leaves viewers unable to predict or escape interruptions to the video they chose.

A fix

Don't replay an ad the viewer has already seen when they seek, and place midrolls only at natural breaks with a minimum gap between them. Always show the ad count, time remaining and when skipping becomes available, and make sure the video resumes reliably once the ad ends.

Grouping, principle and fix drafted with Claude and reviewed by Justusability. Counts are people whose comment Claude labelled a usability complaint about this issue; see Method for how, and its limits. Something wrong here?

All 228 source comments