Shutdown of third party YouTube app 'Vance' raises questions about ad blockers – eMarketer

The news: YouTube Vanced, a third-party app that allowed users to access YouTube Premium features and watch YouTube ad-free, announced it is shutting down after an implied cease and desist from Google, per 9to5Google, revitalizing discussion around the use of internet ad blockers.How it works: The popular app allowed users to customize their experience on YouTube, offering them access to features that YouTube locks behind its Premium subscription. But what likely landed it in the most hot water was that it allowed users to have an ad-free YouTube experience.Most popular ad blockers bar YouTube ads by default already, but Vanced’s ad blocking went a step further. Users could block info cards, ending screens, watermarks, and even natively implemented ad reads within the videos themselves—the kind that allow companies to advertise even through regular ad blockers.Vanced users could also customize their YouTube homepage experience, allowing them to disable promotions and tabs that showed movies available for purchase. Users could also customize their ad experience on a channel-by-channel basis by creating “allow lists” for advertisements.The prominence of ad blockers: Ordering Vanced to be shut down is a logical step from Google, as advertising forms the basis of its business. But the news…
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