Pay with your wallet or your attention

Unlike with most streaming services, those who can’t stomach YouTube’s latest price increase have an option. Free users can browse and stream as many YouTube videos as they want, but they’ll have to contend with ads. After earning more than $40 billion in ad revenue in 2025, the site expanded the use of unskippable 30-second ads in the TV app this year. Previously, the longest you’d have to wait before getting back to your video was 15 seconds.

But viewers have increasingly pointed to even longer ad breaks. In recent days, reports of 90-second unskippable ads have proliferated. The company has responded to the kerfluffle, saying, “YouTube does not have a 90-second non-skippable ad format. This isn’t something we are testing right now.” The company’s post on X has since been “community noted” to reaffirm the existence of 90-second unskippable ads.

Despite YouTube’s assurances, many, many viewers report seeing these longer ads, and there are several images that appear to show unskippable 90-second ad breaks. YouTube users have accused the company of lying or using deceptive language in its denial.

Some viewers report that these extra-long breaks are a mix of ad types. They begin with a 30-second unskippable ad, and the player then rolls into a few shorter skippable ads. However, the interface only shows the standard “Skip in” text with a countdown until all the ads are over. The good news is that this is an error, and YouTube is working on it.

YouTube now says it has determined these longer unskippable ads are an interface bug. “We’ve determined this was a result of a bug, which resulted in higher, inaccurate timers being shown for shorter ads,” a company spokesperson said. “We’re rolling out a fix now. As we’ve said, we don’t have a 90 second non-skippable ad format and this was not a test.”

YouTube just isn’t the streaming video free-for-all it once was. You’ll have to pay in one way or another if you want to watch YouTube content. The site will either take an ever larger bite of your budget, or you’ll have to sit through more ads than ever before. There are alternative YouTube clients that can strip out ads, and ad-blockers can do the same on the web. However, it’s a cat-and-mouse game as YouTube works to block the blockers.