90-second YouTube ad timers were just a bug, streamer says

Users have been reporting 90-second-long, non-skappable ads on YouTube’s TV apps this week, and as you might expect, they’re not happy about it. Today, though, YouTube says it’s rolling out a fix for the issue.

YouTube tells 9to5Google that this week’s reports stem from a bug that caused YouTube to show “higher, inaccurate timers” for ads that weren’t actually 90 seconds long, doubling down on its previous statements that the unusual behavior wasn’t intentional and wasn’t part of any test for new ad formats.

Non-skippable ads on YouTube are officially capped at a length of 30 seconds. Ads can run much longer than that, but per YouTube’s policies, those that you have to sit through in their entirety can’t exceed that limit. That doesn’t line up with reports from this week saying that some ads on YouTube’s TV apps have been showing a 90-second countdown.

Apparently, it’s the timer that’s off: YouTube says the ads in question weren’t actually 90 seconds long, but that “a bug” was causing the app’s UI to say they were.

Here’s YouTube’s full statement, as shared by 9to5:

We’ve determined this was a result of a bug, which resulted in higher, inaccurate timers being shown for shorter ads. We’re rolling out a fix now. As we’ve said, we don’t have a 90 second non-skippable ad format and this was not a test.

The nature of the bug is unclear, and we don’t know how long the fix will take to be fully deployed. In any case, if you’ve been seeing these bizarrely long timers, you shouldn’t be for much longer.