no because of sec 230 and publisher rights, they were still directly serving them before, the only difference now is that it’s tied into the video stream directly, rather than broken out as a second one.
In the past they have always said that they aren’t transmitting the content and so it’s the responsibility of the transmitter of the data. Now the content at least appears to be coming from youtube not the advertisers. So I’m curious if that’s enough to make it fall under section 230 which would require that they make a good faith effort to remove “objectionable” content.
legally that’s the same as far as courts care.
The only thing that would change this is a ruling on advertiser responsibility. Or something tangentially related that would force them to properly regulate ads for example.
Ultimately i’m guessing unless youtube rolls their own in home ads, instead of allowing other advertising agencies to run their ads on youtube, it simply wouldn’t apply here.