Celebrating its twentieth anniversary this year, YouTube is widely recognised as the largest online video-sharing platform.
Its mission statement— “to give everyone a voice and show them the world”—has inspired a revolution in digital content, with its 2.49 billion monthly users contributing half of all social media activity worldwide.
YouTube generates the majority of its revenue via content monetisation, where companies pay to advertise before and during videos. Over the last nine years, this revenue has more than quadrupled, reaching $8.97bn in Q1 2025—an astonishing 10% of the revenue of its parent company, Alphabet. Analysts now estimate that YouTube’s ad revenue will balloon to an eye-watering $64.2bn by 2030.
So, by every metric, YouTube is flying high. Yet these headlines mask a deeper dynamic. YouTube is not just monetising; it is monetising relentlessly. Advertising on the platform has spiraled out of control.
The YouTube ad explosion
YouTube first introduced adverts in 2007 in the form of overlays. In 2008, it switched to pre-roll adverts, which play at the start of a video. What began as one or two pre-roll adverts has slowly morphed into constant interruptions to the viewing experience. Ad breaks of as many as eight to ten consecutive, non-skippable ads have been reported by users, while the high ad load is exacerbated when watching YouTube on TV, where the maximum non-skippable ad is 60 seconds, as opposed to 15 seconds for mobile. Platform tests have revealed that YouTube is packing more and more ads onto connected TV devices, with blocks of ads that make the platform feel more like linear TV than streaming.
For users who have not subscribed to YouTube’s increasingly expensive, ad-free premium service, even basic actions like rewinding or fast-forwarding a video trigger an avalanche of repetitive ads. The future looks even bleaker. YouTube recently announced a new feature called “Peak Points,” which uses AI to insert ads during the most emotionally charged moments of a video. And that sums up the problem: while ads are most effective when viewers are engaged, this is also when they least want to be interrupted.
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By GlobalDataThe path to platform decay
With its heavy reliance on a feature that detracts from the user experience, YouTube has become the flagbearer of what blogger Cory Doctorow calls “enshittification.” This process describes how a product or service, especially online platforms, degrade over time due to self-sabotage.
Broadly, there are four stages of enshittification. Initially, the platform gains market leadership by genuinely prioritising user satisfaction over profit and building a great product. To pay back its investors and business partners, the platform then begins to extract value from its users, such as via advertising or data collection. After that, the platform goes after the partners themselves, extracting more value by charging higher fees or reducing payouts. What’s left is a hollowed-out, but (temporarily) highly profitable company. The final outcome is often total collapse.
While YouTube is still some distance away from the final collapse, there is no question it is degrading in the same manner. Indeed, what made YouTube so special in the beginning was the lack of profit motive. It was undeniably a great product, full of spontaneous, slice-of-life content that users flocked to. And then came the cash grab after Google acquired the platform in 2006, transforming it into an ad-based profit centre. Over time, Google has slowly exhausted any goodwill that YouTube initially fostered among users.
Abandoning the YouTube ship
When viewers abandon YouTube, they not only take ad revenue away, but they also take their time, loyalty, and community with them. Algorithms may not notice it yet, but signs of stagnation are emerging. More and more creators are complaining of a plateau or decline in their channel growth and subscriber counts, while others say they are facing burnout due to charges on the platform or difficulty navigating the algorithm. Many predict a mass exodus in the near future, and it will not be long before YouTube turns to its ad buyers to pick up the slack.
But when YouTube does turn to its ad buyers, it may not find them so willing to cough up. Between concerns over the potential for harmful content and countless scandals, many companies are hesitant to associate their brand image with the platform. This is especially pertinent given that the type of content that reliably gets the most views—and, therefore, potential ad clicks—is shock-factor, borderline exploitative content, or controversy-chasing podcast channels. As the reputation of YouTube becomes increasingly wedded to this type of “brain rot” content, advertisers will have to consider whether they want theirs to be, too.
Ultimately, an exodus of unhappy ad buyers will mark the beginning of the end for YouTube.
Where does YouTube go from here?
If YouTube hopes to celebrate another twenty years, the platform must urgently recalibrate its business model. At the very least, YouTube should reinstate ad caps. It should also revise its ad insertion logic and enable creators to opt-in to ad breaks at natural points.
Additionally, it should publish metrics on ad frequency and viewer retention. Above all, YouTube must realign with its original promise and respect its users.
