I'm pretty sure this is a feature that's available at least to big creators – I remember a Tom Scott video doing a bit involving scheduling an ad at a particularly fitting moment.

You might have to be a YouTube partner or something like that to make use of this stuff, though.

You need to be in the YouTube partner program, but that's not just available to big creators.

You basically need at least 1000 subscribers and a certain amount of video watch time per year to qualify. When people talk about getting monetized on YouTube, this is what they mean.

Yeah, YouTube's UI lets you set where the ads go. The creator tools let you set how many, and where midroll ads will play. However, most creators just click the "insert automatically" button.

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6175006

> However, most creators just click the "insert automatically" button.

That seems like a good opportunity for a neural net feature that's smarter than simple scene cut detection. While most theatrical films lack many good spots for commercial breaks, there are certainly a lot of "less bad" spots. Sadly, I doubt YT will bother since they no longer seem to care about viewer experience in recent years.

YouTube doesn't even bother with scene cut detection; they'll insert ads mid-sentence. A lot.

That’s one way to keep you watching, you’ve at least gotta hear the rest of the sentence! /s

It appears that the intent of the ad scheduling is to be so annoying that it motivates people on the fence to pay for premium.

Would ABC make more if everyone switched to premium, or if everyone was ad-suppported? Be thorough, include ad sales people, telephone lines, lawyers, etc.

They do.

This is absolutely already a feature of YouTube for creators.