YouTube ads are hitting a new low with new ‘Peak Points’ strategy

YouTube is always cooking up new ways to show you ads. Be it skippable ads, non-skippable ads, mid-rolls, or bumpers, the goal, as always, is to find more places to make more money. And now, thanks to AI, YouTube has found a brand-new spot to squeeze in ads — right when something exciting happens in a video.

That’s the big idea behind “Peak Points,” a new ad product powered by Google Gemini. It uses AI to identify the most engaging or emotionally charged moments in popular YouTube videos and then serves ads right there. Yes, right when you get to that good part, an ad will be waiting to disrupt your experience.

If you’re an advertiser, this might sound like a brilliant move. For viewers, it’s pretty much the worst possible timing. YouTube even shows off an example where an ad rolls in just after someone proposes in a video. Because apparently, what we really needed were more ads in our videos, especially ones specifically designed to ruin the best parts.

It’s still unclear whether these “Peak Point” ads will be skippable or not. Guess we’ll have to wait and find out the hard way.

Of course, if you’d rather not deal with any of this, there’s always YouTube Premium, the ultimate “solution” to the ads problem YouTube created in the first place. So in the end, it’s a win-win for YouTube.