YouTube to remove overlay ads from April 6th onwards

New Delhi : The online streaming platform YouTube has announced that they will be removing overlay ads ad format from April 6th onwards.

“Starting on April 6th, 2023, the ‘Overlay ads’ ad format will no longer appear on YouTube to help improve the viewer experience and shift engagement to higher performing ad formats on desktop and mobile devices,” the company said in a YouTube Help Forum post.

The overlay ads are the formats which are only served on desktops and sometimes disrupt the viewer's experience. According to the company, the ads only appear on desktop and will not have a major impact on the creators as the engagement has already shifted to the other ad formats. Moreover, the video streaming platform also mentioned that there are no changes to any of their other ad formats.

Earlier this month, YouTube had made its English Help Forum one way for its readers. "Unfortunately, many threads are not relevant for user-based discussion and a large amount of questions go unanswered. Our goal is to ensure this can be a helpful space for all of you, so we’ll be using this time and these experiments to inform the long-term plan for this forum — more to come," according to the YouTube Help page.