Some creators do put in fairly natural ad breaks, since there is an option to manually define where to run ads. RedLetterMedia is the best example that comes to mind; they get to a stopping point and cut to black and then an ad plays, and then they cut back afterwards. If you’re paying for Premium or otherwise blocking ads, it just looks like a segment transition.
The problem is that YouTube has on several occasions actually gone in and added huge numbers of additional automatic ad breaks, showing at random places in the video, and has stated that the “opt-out” is YouTubers manually going in and deleting those new ad breaks for every single video.[1] Most YouTubers don’t care enough to spend the time to manually fix it for every video, or just accept the excuse of “oh, but you get more revenue this way” and don’t bother. So then baking in smooth ad transitions becomes retroactively useless since YouTube is just running ads at random points in the video anyway.
The problem is that YouTube has on several occasions actually gone in and added huge numbers of additional automatic ad breaks, showing at random places in the video, and has stated that the “opt-out” is YouTubers manually going in and deleting those new ad breaks for every single video.[1] Most YouTubers don’t care enough to spend the time to manually fix it for every video, or just accept the excuse of “oh, but you get more revenue this way” and don’t bother. So then baking in smooth ad transitions becomes retroactively useless since YouTube is just running ads at random points in the video anyway.
[1]: https://twitter.com/redlettermedia/status/111398430485249228...