YouTube is looking into server-side ads to fight ad blockers

YouTube has been in a long and bloody battle with ad blockers. Ads are a major source of income for the company, so it’s fighting tooth and nail with the companies allowing people to skip ads. Well, the video-sharing platform might have a way to win the battle. YouTube is looking into server-side ad injection.

To catch you up, there are tools on the market that allow free YouTube users to skip ads. This is something that the company doesn’t like because it earns much of its money from ad revenue. Also, the creators that users watch also benefit from that revenue.

YouTube has tried several tactics to handicap the watching experience of people using ad blockers. Recently, people using ad blockers will open a video to see it skipped to the end. They don’t have the ability to watch the video.

YouTube is considering using server-side ad injection

While YouTube has been pulling out every stop, ad blocker use is still going. However, according to a new report, the company might take a drastic new approach to blocking ad blockers. It could resort to server-side ad injection.

When YouTube currently serves ads, it shows them as separate entities to the videos. This is something that ad blockers exploit. They’re able to target the ads themselves and block them.

However, if YouTube delivers server-side ads, then the ads will basically be baked into the video stream. The ads will become one with the video, so the ad blockers will have no power. Obviously, people who use ad blockers will be upset.

Right now, we don’t know when/if YouTube is going to implement this new change. It’s currently testing this change with a limited number of users. Some of them have noticed it even while using Firefox and using ublock. So, it looks like YouTube is already putting this into motion.

With server-side ad injection, there’s no telling what’s going to happen to the ad blockers that are on the market now. Also, we don’t know what sort of response we should expect from the community. We’re sure that there will be a widespread YouTube boycott or something.