Google has responded after a YouTube viewer went viral showing a 60-minute unskippable ad.
YouTube’s battle with ad blockers has been taking place over the last few years as the Google-owned platform has put various things into place to block them.
They began cracking down on third-party ad blockers in April 2024, and have allegedly gone as far as blocking entire videos for those who use one as a way to get people to subscribe to YouTube Premium.
In January 2025, one user took to the YouTube subreddit to share one reason why people often use ad-blockers on the website.
Viewer reports 60-minute unskippable YouTube ad
On January 23, one user on r/YouTube shared a picture they had taken of a 58-minute ad they received while watching a Minecraft-related video. To make matters worse, they were unable to skip past it.
This prompted many others to flock to the comments to share their own experiences with extremely long ads while watching YouTube videos.
“I’ve gotten 10-hour ads that’s nothing,” one user said.
Another commented: “I have gotten several entire movies as ads but they were skippable. Free movie though.”
“YouTube does not have rules in what ads to put. You can literally pirate movies and make them ads. It’s a real problem and YouTube needs to be heavily sued for their poor quality control on ads,” replied a third.
After the post went viral, however, Google issued a statement confirming their crackdown on adblockers and told people who don’t want to see 60-minute ads to simply subscribe to YouTube Premium.
“Ads are a vital lifeline for our creators that helps them run and grow their businesses. That’s why the use of ad blockers violates YouTube’s Terms of Service. We’ve launched a global effort to urge viewers with ad blockers enabled to allow ads on YouTube or try YouTube Premium for an ad-free experience,” they said.
This comes just months after YouTube started investigating claims that Premium subscribers were still receiving ads on the platform.