Monetisation & Revenue
Overlay Ad
Also called: banner overlay, overlay banner
Desktop only, never on mobile or in the app. YouTube switched them off on 6 April 2023, describing them as a legacy format that disrupted viewing and saying the earnings effect on most channels would be small. They still appear in old monetisation guides and in glossaries nobody has updated, so a course telling you to enable overlay ads is a course written before 2023. There is no setting for them in Studio now. The in-player formats that remain are skippable and non-skippable pre-rolls, mid-rolls and bumpers, with the newer shopping and product surfaces sitting alongside them.