A YouTube upgrade is rolling out now, but you probably won't like it

With a global audience of around 2.5 billion, it's thought that nearly 50% of those who have access to the internet watch YouTube every month. While many of those users are on mobile devices it's increasingly easy, and common, to watch YouTube on the big screen - the television. 

YouTube is not only one of the biggest social media platforms, but one of the best streaming services too. As a platform, YouTube is constantly evolving, adding options to highlight things like AI-generated content, or allowing the community to add notes to videos for more clarification. 

But at the same time, YouTube is a huge advertising platform, with an advertising revenue of approximately $31.5 billion in 2023. And it's advertising where YouTube is making its upgrade, according to 9to5Google. 

Google has been toying with different ways to insert adverts into and around videos, be that longer advert blocks or unskippable adverts, but the latest change is to place adverts when you hit pause.

That's right. When someone walks in and starts talking about their day, or detailing why they're upset about something you said, it's only natural to pause that cat video so that you can have a proper conversation. Now that moment of domestic interaction could be enhanced with an advert for Dunkin' Donuts.

I paused my video and this showed up from r/youtube

I'm not singling out Dunkin' Donuts specifically, but so far that seems to be the advert that people have seen, according to reports on Reddit - I'm sure that once other donut outlets see the potential, every paused video on YouTube will be tempting you with sweet treats.

Advertising has long been a bone of contention on YouTube, but for many the platform is free to watch and how are all those poor YouTubers going to make a living if you're not getting adverts stuffed into your eyes at every opportunity?

This appears to be a phased roll-out. I've been doggedly watching YouTube videos of people jetwashing, well, everything, regularly pausing to "work" and I'm yet to see these adverts.

It's just the latest route to making money from screen time, but to be honest, it's not too offensive: if I've pressed pause, it's likely that I'm doing something else, so it's not actually too much of a distraction.