YouTube is getting ready to introduce unskippable ads

On the company’s AdWords blog on Monday, Project Manager Zach Lupei announced bumper ads — “a new six-second video format […] ideal for driving incremental reach and frequency, especially on mobile, whe-re “snackable videos” perform well.” Being only six seconds long, they’re also unskippable.

It’s worth noting that these bumper ads wouldn’t replace longer commercials altogether, but rather would be used to complement them. In a recent campaign, Atlantic Records found that it could use short bumpers to highlight guests featured on an upcoming record, and then use a full TrueView ad to provide “the fuller story around the album and the band.” Used in conjunction, the two formats were even more effective than they would have been on their own.

“We like to think of Bumper ads as little haikus of video ads – and we’re excited to see what the creative community will do with them,” wrote Lupei. Advertisers will be able to start using bumper ads in May.

Here’s a sample of a bumper ad you might see starting next month: