The long wait before your video of a man diving into a dirty river and going on a psychedelic quest plays out in all its glory is nearly over, as Google confirms its plans to drop unskippable 30-second advertisements on YouTube.

Instead, the search engine will deploy shorter ad formats on its video-sharing behemoth from next year. 

In a statement, the company said it hopes the change will benefit all parties:

“We’re committed to providing a better ads experience for users online. As part of that, we’ve decided to stop supporting 30-second unskippable ads as of 2018 and focus instead on formats that work well for both users and advertisers."

While the site currently also runs 15-second and 20-second ads, it is expected that YouTube will look to focus on unskippable "bumper" ads that last just five or six seconds in the future.

These are Google product manager Zach Lupei's "little haikus" that were initially reported to be the focus of YouTube's move to unskippable advertising last April.

The company said then that early tests had shown the bumpers brought an improvement in recall, awareness and consideration. It also said they are most effective when paired with TrueView and Google Preferred ads.

Lupei commented in a blog post at the time:

"Bumper ads are ideal for driving incremental reach and frequency, especially on mobile, where 'snackable videos' perform well".