Full screen ads
The new format should show previews of products or services offered by the advertiser below the running ad.
The visuals, which are somewhat reminiscent of a classic e-shop, should help with this. While your ad plays in the video, the bottom bar will turn into a menu of products and services that you can click on directly. The ordering step, which will take you to the real online store, is done with a big blue “START SHOPPING” button. In the end, however, you have to expect the ad to take up the whole screen.
Don’t worry, thankfully everything disappears after the ad ends, including the button and the shopping list. However, you will be able to turn off the product preview while the ad is playing.
Preliminary results are positive
The video portal has high hopes for its new format and believes that this move will bring more user groups to shop and promote a stronger position in e-commerce for companies and businesses. In fact, a number of companies independently mention that more than 70 percent of customers have bought their product thanks to promotion on this channel. Moreover, such results make YouTube a very important advertising tool.
In practical terms, however, this means that very soon we will have to get used to an even more crowded desktop, which may motivate some users to switch to YouTube Premium, formerly YouTube Red (a paid membership that offers ad-free music and video viewing), and others to use ad-blocking tools/plugins even more heavily.