Google-owned YouTube has announced that the "Overlay ads" ad format will no longer appear on YouTube, starting from April 6.
"Starting on April 6th, 2023, the 'Overlay ads' ad format will no longer appear on YouTube to help improve the viewer experience and shift engagement to higher performing ad formats on desktop and mobile devices," the company said in a YouTube Help Forum post.
Overlay ads are a legacy ad format that is only served on desktops and are disruptive for viewers. The company said that these ads only appeared on the desktop and expects to see a limited impact for most Creators as engagement shifts to other ad formats.
Moreover, the video streaming platform also mentioned that there are no changes to any of their other ad formats. Earlier this month, YouTube disabled new posts and comments on its English Help forum as it switches to a read-only mode ahead of "improvements" in the next several months.
"Unfortunately, many threads are not relevant for user-based discussion and a large amount of questions go unanswered. Our goal is to ensure this can be a helpful space for all of you, so we'll be using this time and these experiments to inform the long-term plan for this forum -- more to come," according to the YouTube Help page.