We compare the frequency and length of advert breaks on YouTube videos and live TV.
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00:00So, you've been watching YouTube quite a lot recently and you've noticed it feels like
00:07there's quite a lot of adverts and maybe in the age of streaming and online content it's
00:15been a while since you've watched any terrestrial TV. So you might be wondering, is there more
00:20adverts on TV or on YouTube? Well, I'm tech writer Matt Mohn-Hickson and I decided to
00:28investigate. So I watched a bunch of videos around 15 to 20 minutes or about the same length
00:36of an average TV show like you know your sort of half an hour TV series, your episodes of
00:43The Chase or you know Tipping Point and that was an hour long and then I compared it to
00:51a TV show on ITV, the aforementioned Tipping Point. I watched it was Tipping Point
00:59Lucky Stars which is like a celebrity version of it and I watched an episode of that and I
01:05timed how long the ad breaks were and how often they were and then I'd also watched a bunch of
01:11YouTube videos to see when the ad breaks were and how long and if you could skip them. So,
01:18I found that there are more stoppages in a YouTube video on the whole, especially if it's
01:26shorter. Obviously it depends if the videos are monetized, if they're not monetized there won't
01:31be ad breaks because there's no adverts on them but for videos that do have ad breaks
01:38and these were all under 30 minutes I watched, usually I tend to watch longer ones but
01:44for this purpose I watched shorter videos and generally speaking there'd be an ad break before
01:51the starts which is not dissimilar from watching TV on terrestrial TV to be honest.
01:58You get about two adverts would pop up but usually I could skip within about 10 seconds
02:05and then there'd be a mid video ad break and then maybe a second mid video ad break depending
02:14on the video I guess depends how popular it is and how many people want to advertise and then
02:19at the end if you didn't stop the video if you just let the video you know if you're doing
02:23something else and it just kept on rolling it would go into another advert break. Some of the
02:29videos also have sponsorship inside the videos so obviously you can't skip them but on a YouTube
02:36video generally speaking unless the adverts are really short you probably will be able to skip
02:42after about 15 seconds so it's annoying because it's breaking up the video pretty regularly but
02:49you don't have to see a lot of adverts you can skip them pretty quick whereas when I was watching
02:54Tipping Point Lucky Stars on ITV it had less ad breaks than a 15-20 minute YouTube video
03:03it stopped less it had three advert breaks that I timed but they were significantly longer and
03:11you can't skip if you're watching live obviously if you've recorded a program on your TiVo box or
03:17your Skybox or other boxes that allow you to record things you can fast forward through them
03:23I'm not talking about this here we're talking about live Terrestrial TV and so the advert breaks
03:29were generally between two minutes and three and a half minutes so it's quite a long break
03:35you know long enough I guess to go and get a cup of tea or go to the toilet so yeah significant
03:41advert breaks less of them but longer whereas YouTube generally speaking there's more so your
03:48videos are interrupted more regularly but you can skip them pretty quickly so they kind of just fade
03:54into the background you sort of get used to it whereas TV ad breaks are more noticeable because
03:59they're longer unless you've got a you know you've recorded it on your fancy box and you're able to
04:05fast forward through it so yeah that was my findings it's yeah more ad breaks on a YouTube video
04:13but skippable less ad breaks on TV longer