Why you’re about to see a lot of 8 min videos on YouTube

Daniel Barnes
2 min readJul 11, 2020

YouTube has changed it’s mid-roll ad requirements

Photo by Christian Wiediger on Unsplash

When YouTube made the video length requirement for mid-roll ads ten minutes in length the platform was flooded with videos that did just that.

They were everywhere — 10:01 video length was common.

It’s a well known tactic that by making a ten minute video and keeping people engaged alongside the use of mid-roll ads can bring in a decent amount of Adsense money.

The changes

The first change is the video length time.

Your videos only need to be eight minutes long. Perhaps YouTube have seen that our attention spans have decreased with the rise of platforms such as TikTok with its 15–60 second videos and Instagram stories that are 15 seconds long.

Eight minutes feels like a good length for a video.

The second change is the removal of manual control over mid-roll ads.

YouTube will automatically enrol all qualifying videos on the platform to include mid-roll ads. You won’t be able to select the frequency by the look of things but you can manually adjust where YouTube places the ads.

YouTube is using AI and Machine Learning to place the ads for you to save you time on the manual back-end work in YouTube Studio.

YouTube email detailing the change

Do you think this is a good move by YouTube?

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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Daniel Barnes

Making a Better Life and writing about my lessons learned to help you find your better life. Connect on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielbarnesgsd/.