Almost everyone can agree that ads are the most annoying aspect of free streaming since they interrupt viewing and not just once if the video is long enough. YouTube users used to circumvent the crackdown by using the mobile app instead, but that's no longer a choice.

Ad Blockers Won't Work on YouTube Mobile

YouTube finally restricted users from watching videos on its website unless they turned off ad blockers back in October 2023. A message would pop up stating "Video playback is blocked unless YouTube is allowlisted or the ad blocker is disabled."

Even before that, the company was already testing its crackdown efforts by limiting the number of videos a user can watch with ad blockers on. As YouTube continues to expand its crackdown efforts, YouTube mobile is not facing similar restrictions as well.

In a blog post, YouTube said: "We want to emphasize that our terms don't allow third-party apps to turn off ads because that prevents the creator from being rewarded for viewership," adding that ads on YouTube help support creators and let billions of people use the service.

Should a user have ad blockers enabled while using YouTube's mobile app, they might experience buffering issues and error messages stating that the content they're watching is not available on the app, as reported by Gizmodo.

That leaves one option to avoid ads, and that's to pay for YouTube Premium's subscription service, which costs $13.99 a month. It would certainly help the company as it saw an ad revenue decline for two quarters straight in April 2023.

This is an unexpected turnout for Google, especially since it has been thriving for years and barely saw a drop in ad sales for two decades. Obviously, it was reason enough for the tech giant to implement measures such as the crackdown to prevent further loss.

Read Also: Online Ads Can Be Used by the Govt. to Infect Devices with Spyware

Why Ad Blockers Are Important

No one can deny that ads are annoying, which is the main reason for many users enable third-party ad blockers as they open streaming sites and visit websites. However, uninterrupted content consumption is not all that it's good for.

Most ads you see online are basically harmless, and clicking on them will likely take you to a site that explains or sells the products or services it's promoting. What others might not know is that some ads can actually be harmful.

In some cases, they are infected will malware and can appear as banner or text ads. Some of them don't even need to be clicked on to work. As a result, the device in use could be infected with malware that installs malicious software.

Bad actors would also use this tactic to conduct scams and steal private or personal data. This process is called malvertising, and according to McAfee, even legitimate advertising networks might not be aware that they display malicious advertisements.

They can appear in many forms such as flash videos, compromised URLs, ad calls, creative ads, videos, landing pages, and more. Trusted websites have been targeted by such methods like Spotify and The New York Times, which means that users should always be careful no matter what site they visit.

Related: Users Are Uninstalling Ad Blockers Due to YouTube's New Policy