YouTube is cracking down on the use of ad blocking software by increasingly forcing users of the incredibly popular video website to allow ads to run or pay for its YouTube Premium service. Until recently, ad blocking tech had worked on the Google-owned YouTube, but now warning messages are appearing and stopping videos from playing altogether.

If you are using an ad blocker on a browser such as Google Chrome, you may now see a warning message displayed when you try to watch a YouTube video. It asks users to either allow ads on YouTube by disabling their ad blocker, or by opting to pay for YouTube Premium – the paid for version of YouTube that has no video ads – that costs £12.99 per month.

One message reportedly says ‘video playback is blocked unless YouTube is allowlisted or the ad blocker is disabled’.

YouTube communications manager Christopher Lawton confirmed to The Verge that YouTube has “launched a global effort” to ask people to turn off ad blockers when watching YouTube videos. He also claimed that the use of ad blockers violates YouTube’s terms of service and that “ads support a diverse ecosystem of creators globally and allow billions to access their favourite content on YouTube.”

Digital advertising is usually shown on free-to-use websites to keep them free-to-use. In this case, the advertisers are paying YouTube to run their ads before or during YouTube videos to get the ads for their products and services viewed by you while you wait to watch the video you’ve clicked on.

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YouTube has run ads on videos for years but has recently ramped up the frequency and length of ads in an apparent push to get people to subscribe to YouTube Premium. If you are fed up with sitting through long, non-skippable ads, you might have previously used an ad blocker. But YouTube is blocking the ad blockers now – so you may either need to turn yours off, or pay up.

• Advert-free experience without interruptions.
• Rocket-fast speedy loading pages.
• Exclusive & Unlimited access to all our content.

One ad block company, AdGuard, told Wired it had seen a record number of uninstalls of its software in recent weeks, with the report suggesting it could be directly linked to YouTube’s crackdown. But popular ad blockers allow you to run ads on specific websites or URLs rather than switching them off completely, so you can whitelist YouTube but keep ads at bay when you’re on other sites.

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