When you’re watching a show on TV and an ad comes on, that pretty much means that it’s time for you to take a break, get up, stretch a bit, grab a snack or drink, and come back when the show starts playing again. However this also means that a lot of times, ads are running with no eyeballs on them which is a wasted opportunity.However come 2019, Variety reports that both Hulu and AT&T are expected to start introducing pause ads to their respective platforms. This means that when you pause a show, ads will appear instead and are expected to remain until you unpause them. This means that whether you like it or not, you will see these ads.
According to Jeremy Helfand, vice president and head of advertising platforms for Hulu, “As binge-viewing happens more and more, it’s natural they are going to want to pause, it’s a natural break in the storytelling experience.” Matt Van Houten, vice president of product at Xandr Media, AT&T’s advertising division adds, “We know you’re going to capture 100% viewability when they pause and unpause. There’s a lot of value in that experience.”
As it stands what happens right now is that for most streaming platforms, ads tend to be run at the start of a video, or in the case of longer video clips, ads are inserted in the middle of clips as well. For the most part this can be “avoided” by the user switching to doing something else or walking away until the ads are done, but it could be much harder when pause ads are introduced.
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