YouTube first spoke about pause ads last year when it started trialing them in select regions. At the time, the company said that when you pause a video, it will shrink, and an ad will appear next to it.
“In Q1, we saw strong traction from the introduction of a pause ads pilot on connected TVs, a new non-interruptive ad format that appears when users pause their organic content,” Schindler noted. He went on to share that YouTube’s pause ads are “driving strong brand lift results” and “are commanding premium pricing from advertisers.”
Schindler didn’t share any timelines for when pause ads will start appearing on YouTube, but we know they’ll first roll out on smart TVs. The nature of these ads, including their duration, skippability, and more is still unclear. We also don’t know if Google plans to introduce these ads on YouTube’s mobile apps.
It's not really a long-run solution. It just transfers the costs of paying for the content to the people who continue to view the ads, and in the long run, if enough people do it for clamping down to be financially worthwhile, Alphabet can clamp down. Hell, they did a bit already when they throttled
youtube-dl. Haven't gone afteryt-dlp's parallel-streams workaround yet, but if that has enough users, it's an inevitability.