Last week, Google announced that 15-second non-skippable ads will be rolled out to Google Ads for all advertisers to use.

Before this, 15-second ads were only available via YouTube reserved placements. This is an alternative media buying platform for YouTube, whereby advertisers bid for video placements outside of Google Ads. Here, advertisers could pay on a cost per thousand impression (CPM) strategy or a cost per day (CPD) strategy. With CPM as the most popular, advertisers could buy formats including standard in-stream 15 or 30 second ads.

Though more controllable than Google Ads through the option of fixed CPM bidding, YouTube reservation placements are limited to only YouTube. Whereas Google Ads has placements over search partners, YouTube and display partners.

Google have released that advertisers on Google Ads will soon have the option to select 15-second non-skippable in-stream ads as a format within video campaigns. Until this update, advertisers have had options to use skippable in-stream ads, bumper ads, video discovery ads or outstream ads.

The benefit on non-skippable ads is just that, that users have to watch the duration of the ad. This leads to more video views, but can also have an impact on engagement rate. With ads you are forced to watch, users may be less inclined to engage with the ad and click to the website, perhaps feeling a privacy invasion from the advertiser. There are both pros and cons.

According to Google, this new ad length will allow advertisers to “take advantage of a wide variety of creative lengths and viewer experiences to achieve their communication goals.” In our opinion, having more ad types available can only be a good thing.

Google also said “this is another step towards a more flexible and intuitive buying experience, where all formats are accessible to all advertisers, regardless of how they buy.”

This update is being rolled out to advertisers now and should be available in the upcoming weeks.