YouTube advertising formats

We’ve simplified the choices for ad formats that show before or after your video to improve creator revenue. We’ve removed the individual ad choices for pre-roll, post-roll, skippable, and non-skippable ads. Now, when you turn on ads for new long-form videos, we show your viewers pre-roll, post-roll, skippable, or non-skippable ads when appropriate. This change makes the recommended best practice to turn on all ad formats, the standard for everyone. Your choices for mid-roll ads haven’t changed. We’ve also retained your ad choices for existing long-form videos, unless you change the monetization settings.

To help improve the viewer experience and optimize for higher performing ad formats across desktop and mobile devices, YouTube will no longer run overlay ads starting April 6, 2023. Overlay ads are a legacy ad format that appears on desktop only and we expect limited impact on earnings for most Creators as engagement shifts to other ad formats.

There are several types of ads that may appear during or next to your videos when you've turned on video monetization. We may show the ad formats in the table below before (“pre”), during (“mid”), or after (“post”) the video.

When you turn on ads for new long-form videos, we automatically show your viewers pre-roll, post-roll, skippable, or non-skippable ads when appropriate. You can also turn on mid-roll ads for videos longer than 8 minutes and decide whether to manually or automatically insert the ad breaks. Learn more about managing mid-roll ad breaks.

Video ad format	Description	Platform	Spec
Skippable video ads	Skippable video ads allow viewers to skip ads after 5 seconds.	Computer, mobile devices, TV, and game consoles	Plays in video player (option to skip after 5 seconds).
Non-skippable video ads	Non-skippable video ads must be watched before a video can be viewed.	Computer, mobile devices, TV, and game consoles	Plays in video player. 15 or 20 seconds in length, depending on regional standards. On TVs only, may be 30 seconds.
Bumper ads	Short, non-skippable video ads of up to 6 seconds that must be watched before a video can be viewed. Bumper ads are turned on when skippable or non-skippable ads are turned on.	Computer, mobile devices, TV, and game consoles	Plays in video player, up to 6 seconds long.

Turn on ads for multiple videos

To turn on ads for multiple videos you’ve already uploaded:

1. Go to YouTube Studio.
2. In the left menu, select Content .
3. Select the gray box on the left of the video thumbnail for any video that you want to monetize.
4. Click the Edit dropdown in the black bar above your video list  Monetization.
5. Click On in the monetization dropdown.
   • To change ad settings for mid-roll ads in bulk: Click Edit  Ad settings  Check the box next to “Place ads during video (mid-roll)” and decide whether you want auto mid-roll ads for videos without ad breaks or all videos.
6. Click Update videos  Check the box next to “I understand the implications of this action”  Update videos.

YouTube Shorts ads

Ads on Shorts are immediately swipeable video or image ads that appear between Shorts in the Shorts Feed. Learn more about how ads work on Shorts in our YouTube Shorts monetization policies.

Default mid-roll ad settings

Learn how to change your channel’s default settings to feature mid-roll ad breaks in new uploads.

Ads outside the video player

Watch feed ads are ads that appear in the feed of recommended videos below the player on mobile and next to the player on computers. These types of ads cannot be controlled from within YouTube Studio.

Back-to-back ads

Also referred to as ad pods, two back-to-back video ads can occur when you turn on ads for your long-form video (at least 5 minutes in length). Ad pods help reduce interruptions for viewers of longer videos, resulting in a better viewer experience.