YouTube shoves them in the middle of the video in a way the creator clearly didn’t plan for though - cutting someone off mid sentence usually. Though the ridiculous minute/hour long ads have always been skippable in a few seconds in my experience, and I’m pretty sure I’d just stop watching the video if they weren’t.

>YouTube shoves them in the middle of the video in a way the creator clearly didn’t plan for though - cutting someone off mid sentence usually.

It's possible for the creator to manually place ads in the middle of the video or to let YouTube automatically place them. In both cases you will likely get ads that are in the middle of a sentence, because the ad placement tool is poor. It can be laggy and imprecise, but most frustratingly, it tends to break if you play around with it for more than 30 seconds. At that point you lose track of where you were and have to do it again. It's been broken like that for a long time. My guess is that the state of that tool is part of the reason why creators don't place their ads precisely. Going from a full fledged video editor with great seek and all that, to a poorly functioning web UI is very frustrating.

I think they do it kind of on purpose. Sometimes I'll put videos on in the background while I cook, do the dishes, or brush my teeth. Then an ad starts, but my hands are dirty and I can't touch my phone for a few minutes. Has me wondering if they pick the moment for the ad knowing that I haven't touched the phone for a few minutes.

I don't recall ever seeing a preview for a single movie that lasted for 15 or more than 30 minutes. However, I've seen single commercials on YouTube that last 15 minutes, and some longer than 30 minutes.

Unskippable too, of course!