The companies revealed that they plan to launch a feature that plays ads while videos are on pause sometime next year. The ads would consist of short videos that play when a viewer hits pause, attempting to grab their attention before they divert it elsewhere. AT&T didn’t specify which of its services will get this addition, although both online services as well as regular TV are both possibilities.
It remains to be seen whether people will actually watch these ads, since usually we hit pause on a video so that we don’t have to pay attention to what’s on the screen.