Hadley Simmons/Android Authority
TL;DR
- Users reported seeing non-skippable 90-second ad timers on YouTube this week.
- YouTube previously said the behavior was not part of a test and that it was investigating the issue.
- Today, YouTube said the cause of the long lag was a bug. A solution is currently underway.
Users have been reporting 90-second-long, non-skippable ads on YouTube’s TV apps this week, and as you might expect, they’re not happy about it. However, today, YouTube says it is addressing this issue.
youtube tells 9to5Google This week’s reports stemmed from a bug that caused YouTube to show “high, inaccurate timers” for ads that were not actually 90 seconds long, reiterating on its previous statements that the unusual behavior was not intentional and was not part of any testing for new ad formats.
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Non-skippable ads on YouTube are officially limited to 30 seconds. Ads can last longer than this, but according to YouTube’s policies, ads that you have to watch in full cannot last longer than that limit. This doesn’t match reports this week that some ads on YouTube’s TV apps are showing a 90-second countdown.
Apparently, it’s the timer that’s off: YouTube says the ads in question weren’t actually 90 seconds long, but “a bug” caused the app’s UI to say they were.
Here’s YouTube’s full statement, as shared by 9to5:
We have determined that this was the result of a bug that was resulting in high, incorrect timers for short ads. We are implementing a fix now. As we’ve said, we don’t have a 90-second non-skippable ad format and this was not a test.
The nature of the bug is unclear, and we don’t know how long it will take for the fix to be fully implemented. In any case, if you’ve been noticing these bizarre sightings for a long time, you shouldn’t stick around much longer.
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