YouTube Ad Break Planner
Mid-roll timestamps snapped to your chapters, so an ad never lands mid-sentence.
- 1 runs
- 100% success
Tool input
Overview
About this tool
Takes a video length and your chapter list and places ad breaks on the nearest real cut, keeping clear of the opening and the final minute — and tells you plainly when a video is too short for mid-rolls at all.
Instructions
How to use it
Enter the video’s length as it reads in your timeline, then paste your chapters exactly as they go in the description. Every break is placed on the nearest chapter boundary within forty-five seconds of where the pacing wanted it.
The eight-minute rule
YouTube will not place a mid-roll in a video under eight minutes. That single published threshold is why so much of the platform runs to eight minutes and ten seconds. Below it, pre-roll and post-roll are still available — and stretching an edit to clear the line is a trade worth making on purpose rather than by accident.
Why manual placement is worth two minutes
Automatic placement optimises for revenue, not for your edit, which is how an ad ends up between a question and its answer. The cost of a badly placed break is not the ad; it is the viewer who does not come back after it.
Questions
Frequently asked
How long must a video be for mid-roll ads?
Eight minutes. That is YouTube’s published threshold, and it applies to the video’s length, not its watch time. Under it you get pre-roll and post-roll only.
How many mid-rolls should I run?
Fewer than the maximum. Spacing is an editorial decision this tool leaves to you, and it warns when your spacing implies a break every four minutes or less.
Why does it refuse to place a break near the end?
A break in the final minute buys almost nothing and costs you the end screen, which is the most valuable real estate on the video.
Do I have to use chapters?
No, but the tool is much better with them. Without chapters it can only space the breaks evenly; with them it lands each one on a cut you already made.
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