LOS ANGELES : YouTube users in multiple regions around the world encountered issues in playing videos on the site Wednesday.

The site's TeamYouTube account acknowledged the problems in a Twitter post. "If you're having trouble watching videos on YouTube right now, you're not alone - our team is aware of the issue and working on a fix. We'll follow up here with any updates," it tweeted at 7:23pm ET.

According to monitoring site DownDetector, user-reported YouTube problems spiked at around 7pm ET. The issues appeared most acute in the Northeast US and Western Europe, as well as in Mexico, Australia and South America. Around 95% of the issues reported were with watching videos, per DownDetector.

Users who tried to play videos on YouTube video encountered a spinning wheel, with videos failing to initiate playback. The problems were evident on both desktop and mobile apps.

YouTube ads also were not loading during the technical outage.

 - Reuters