Google has been taking its crusade against adblockers to a whole new level lately, and users are speculating that unskippable multi-hour ads are its latest weapon. Over the past week, Redditors have been sharing screenshots showing that they’ve been served ads with runtimes as long as three hours, with no skip button in sight—and that’s to watch videos that are much shorter than the ads themselves.
Android Authority was the first to report on the phenomenon, linking to threads from users Lin1ex and Standard-Slip6572, who complained about the feature-length interruptions, complete with images of their screens with the ads in full view. The publication also pointed to commenters who made further claims, saying they were served 10-hour or even 90-hour ads, although these more extreme accusations lacked photo evidence.
If that all sounds a little unbelievable to you, you have good instincts. In one of the linked photos above, you might see a small pop-up, separate from YouTube’s UI, that says “Skipping ads…”
This pop-up led Android Authority to question whether it’s only users running ad blockers who are getting this kind of treatment, a question author Aamir Siddiqui reached out to YouTube for confirmation on. While the company didn’t exactly admit to any specific punitive behavior for users employing adblockers, its answer did seem to hint at what’s going on, if you read between the lines.
“…the use of ad blockers violate YouTube’s Terms of Service,” Google’s statement reads. “We’ve launched a global effort to urge viewers with ad blockers enabled to allow ads on YouTube or try YouTube Premium for an ad free experience.”
By YouTube’s own admission, unskippable ads are supposed to be limited to 15-seconds (or up to 60 seconds on YouTube TV), so whether on purpose or not, something is definitely messing up here, assuming the Redditors’ claims are true. While I myself have gotten hour-long ads before, a skip button has always appeared for them.
I reached out to YouTube myself for further clarification, and the company sent me a response that reads much like the one given to Android Authority, but with new lines denying that YouTube serves long, unskippable ads in the first place. “YouTube does not serve minutes-long, non-skippable ads,” I was told. The company also said “Viewers with ad blockers may experience a suboptimal viewing experience, as some ad blockers distort the YouTube playback experience.”
This, again, does not necessarily outright blame ad blockers for the specific issue at hand or admit to any purposeful tweaking behind the scenes, although it does leave the possibility for “distorted” playback open (whatever that means).
it’s worth noting that, despite this denial, the move does line up with the company’s recent behavior. Previously, the company has injected ads straight into videos so that ad blockers can’t detect them, as well as used pop-ups to block users with ad blockers from watching videos at all. Google Chrome as a whole has also started disabling certain ad-blockers, thanks to a controversial change to the API extension developers use.
If you notice an unskippable multi-hour ad on YouTube, try disabling your ad blocker to see if that fixes the problem. If it does, you might then want to try watching the video again in incognito mode to see if the issue is linked to your account—this should help you diagnose what’s going on so you can more easily know what to do next.
Update 1/27/25 at 6:15 PM ET: Added response from YouTube.