- Netflix has announced that AI-Generated Mid-roller ads come in 2026
- YouTube this week also revealed its new gemini-driven ad technology
- Both have also tested ‘pause -ads’ that appear when you put a video on pause
It already felt as if the golden age of streaming was good behind us, but Netflix and YouTube have just confirmed it with new kinds of AI-run ads that seriously test your patience in the near future.
Netflix was the first to speak glowing about its ad technology this week-under its advance exhibition window said the streaming giant that it will launch AI-generated, interactive mid roller ads along with break ads in 2026.
What does ‘AI-Generated’ mean? Unfortunately, it’s as bad as you feared. Netflix explained under advance that these new types of ads will use “generative AI to instantly marry advertisers’ ads with worlds in our shows”.
In other words, mid rolling ads will soon harmoniously melt with the show you see and bathe your eyeballs with subtle messages.
Netflix is extremely convinced that its ad-supported level subscribers will stomach these new advertisements because, according to Amy Reinhard (its president of advertising), members pay as much attention to middle roll ads as they do on the show and the movies themselves. “
Unfortunately, it makes sense to open the ad-disc for Netflix’s bottom line-it ad-supported level hit 94 million monthly users, which is more than twice as much from the same time last year. And Netflix is far from the only streaming service that diminishes with the dark art of new AI-driven ad techniques.
The crucial moment
During his brandcast event this week (via 9to5Google), YouTube also revealed an ad technique with another VRI – one that uses Gemini to find out how to place ads in the most important parts of the video you watch.
YouTube calls this ‘tops’ because it uses AI to find out the most meaningful or ‘pointed’, moments to pull you away from a important moment and dunk your head in an ad announcement.
In the example YouTube shared, the ad was actually served just after the ‘targeted moment’ (a marriage suggestion) rather than during it, but it still looks like a beautiful cynical way to hit you with advertising right when your emotional guard is down.
YouTube did not say exactly when this new ‘feature’ will be rolled out. But it looks like it’s going to arrive before Netflix’s interactive mid rollers and break ads. When we talk about pause ads, this is another trick that YouTube has already tested in its attempt to break your determination and push you into YouTube Premium (or in many cases Ublock Origin).
Analysis: Streaming Giants Removing their Masks
There was an age when Netflix was the scary, ad-free upstart that we all flowed to from cable and its endless advertisements, but these days have long gone.
In fact, if you are already tiring of insidious creeps, there were some cooled remarks from Amy Reinhard (Netflix’s President of Advertising) on Upfront. “If you remove something from today, I hope this is this: The basis of our advertising business is in place,” she said under advance. “And in the future, progress with progress will be even faster”.
Give me some smart glasses with AI-driven ad blockers because this doesn’t sound like a fun ride. I have no problem at all with ads-it would be hypocritical to say anything else, writing to a site that is partly supported by them-but to make them a central part of a paid service seems a little greedy, and I worry about the melting of AI-run ads with entertainment.
As Techradar – Carrie Marshall also recently claimed, represents Prime Video’s ‘Shop the Show’ feature – which gives you immediately purchased products shown in its shows – a troubled trend that only gets worse when we enter 2026. Prime video is like Netflix, much an ad company in disguise.
With AI that unlocks new opportunities, the temptation to saturate shows with marketing opportunities be stronger than ever, and we can increasingly feel like Truman Burbank in The Truman -Show, Wondering why we have the sudden urge to go and buy a chef’s friend. I just hope to get rid of these next generation ads are not only preserved by the wealthy who can afford to replace 14 different ad-free monthly subscriptions.
