YouTube Now Lets You Skip Advertisements

YouTube has finally completed a wide roll-out of TrueView, a feature that has been in testing for some time that allows viewers to skip the advertisements and commercials that play before a video. Now, when you're watching an ad, a second countdown timer at the top of the screen alerts you when you're able to skip the rest and go directly to the video. If advertisers can't capture your attention in a few seconds, they won't keep you around for the whole thing.

It's a bit counterintuitive (advertisers are constantly looking for ways to force you to watch an ad, after all), but YouTube says that the results have been promising so far. Advertisers like it because they only pay if the user doesn't hit the 'skip' button, which means, at least in theory, that the people who do watch their ads are more interested in whatever they're selling.

Of course, given how different this is from what most consumers are used to, it may be a bit too early to gauge how well these ads are actually working -- users may be skeptical of hitting the skip button at all because they've never seen it before.

Read the full story at TechCrunch.