YouTube has announced some new features rolling out in beta, including new side-by-side ads that show up right next to your content. Meanwhile, ads are showing up in the subscriptions feed for many YouTube users.
Announced last year, YouTube has started rolling out support for side-by-side ads on live content. This was initially launched almost a year ago, but users are now seeing the change in action.
A Reddit user shared an example on mobile where a YouTube ad started playing underneath an ongoing livestream. Google previously said the feature would start showing up in September 2025, but would arrive in “more streams” later on.
As mentioned, YouTube confirmed this would be coming, with the new format keeping the live content going but muting the stream during “ad breaks” so you hear audio from the ad rather than the video. After the ad ends, it fades away and the video’s audio returns.
Beyond this, though, a new change appears to be the placement of ads in the YouTube subscriptions feed.
A number of users have reported over the past few days that ads have started showing up in their subscriptions feed. Even for users not using Premium, the subscriptions feed is generally presented ad-free as it is designed to focus solely on channels the user has directly subscribed to.
These ads in the YouTube subscriptions feed show a clear “Sponsored” label, but users still rightfully feel they’re a bit invasive.
This sort of thing has happened before, but we’re seeing a lot more reports this time around, suggesting it’s probably an intentional change. We’ll update this article if YouTube adds any details around why users are seeing this.
More on YouTube:
- YouTube teams up with SiriusXM for audio ads on podcasts, more
- YouTube is ditching ‘Clips,’ officially brings ‘share at timestamp’ to phones
- YouTube Shorts are a lot easier to ignore with this new setting [Gallery]
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