YouTube announced on Monday that it’s strengthening measures against third-party ad-blocking apps that violate its terms of service.
YouTube’s latest initiative to combat ad blocking was announced last fall when the company began a global campaign to encourage viewers with ad blockers to either enable ads on YouTube or switch to YouTube Premium for an ad-free experience, which costs between $13.99 and $18.99, depending on the user’s platform.
But, the company mostly targeted ad-blocking tools on desktops. Users with ad blockers activated encountered a pop-up instructing them to disable the tool while using YouTube. Non-compliance resulted in the site preventing videos from loading, effectively turning the ad blocker into a YouTube blocker.
Although this approach initially curbed some ad blocking on YouTube, it had minimal effect on mobile users. Third-party YouTube apps featuring integrated ad blockers continued to stream videos without interruption.
YouTube is now taking further action to prevent users from taking advantage of this workaround.
Users attempting to watch videos through these third-party apps on mobile may now experience buffering problems or see an error message stating, “The following content is not available on this app.”
“We want to emphasize that our terms don’t allow third-party apps to turn off ads because that prevents the creator from being rewarded for viewership, and Ads on YouTube help support creators and let billions of people around the world use the streaming service,” the company said in a statement.
Google, which is the parent company of YouTube, also explained that any apps using YouTube APIs to block advertisements might soon be restricted from accessing its developer APIs.
“We only allow third-party apps to use our API when they follow our API Services Terms of Service, and when we find an app that violates these terms, we will take appropriate action to protect our platform, creators, and viewers,” the statement added.