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Apple TV update revamps YouTube app, brings ads to the platform for the first time

The Apple TV today received a brand new YouTube app, bringing it up to speed and largely mirroring the experience available on other set-top boxes, with new predictive search and recommendations. The previous app felt like something built by the Apple developers internally, whereas this new app seems to be predominantly designed by Google … with rich YouTube branding throughout.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lB6gIroaizU

Most notably, the new app will show YouTube ads in between videos, offering a new opportunities for Google to bolster its income from video advertising. It was a bit of an anomaly that it took this long for ads to arrive on Apple TV — the iOS YouTube app has shown commercials since its inception.

The updated YouTube app rolls out automatically to Apple TV owners — no software update is required.

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