Friday, July 24th, 2026 – 12:45 am
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From pause ads to home screen ads, new streaming ad formats represent ways for publishers to carve out ad supply from dead air.
Pause ads are “creating new ad space” where it didn’t already exist, said Scott Rossman, VP of product marketing at Warner Bros. Discovery, in an interview with AdExchanger. But these ads are more than just a way for publishers to monetize a paused screen, he said. When viewers divert their attention from a show or a movie, it’s an opportune moment to show them an ad.
Pause ads are promising because they are part of a user-initiated experience, which is arguably more user-friendly than interruptive commercial breaks. But in reality, many viewers did not appreciate pause ads when they first started cropping up. Users expressed annoyance with TiVo’s early pause ads, and some called the ads an obnoxious money grab. A quick Google Search inquiring what TiVo’s pause ads looked like prompted the AI Overview’s chatbot to ask me if I needed help disabling them.
