The new option is called YouTube Red. It costs $9.99 per month and will be available for purchase on October 28th, starting in the US, then rolling out worldwide. Along with removing ads, subscribers will be able to save videos for offline viewing, and keep videos running in the background on mobile. That means you can listen to a music video or a TED Talk while checking email or surfing Instagram. That monthly fee also gives you access to Google Play Music, meaning you get two streaming services for the same price Spotify or Apple Music charge for one without video. As a final enticement, YouTube will also begin putting new, exclusive content behind a paywall.
I use YouTube a lot – several hours of let’s plays a day – but the number of YouTube ads I get is so small – maybe once every ten videos, and always skippable – that I don’t really see the need to pay €10 a month to get rid of them.
I think most people will agree with you on the skippable ads, Thom.
However … i have the feeling they won’t be skippable for long anymore …
if the subscription pays off, why would they be?
Perhaps advertisers want skippable ads. I can think of three good reasons off the top of my head.
1. Longer ads are probably more effective, provided that you don’t alienate the viewer.
2. Ensure that the advertising is reaching the target demographic through detailed viewing statistics.
3. Ensure that they are engaging their target demographic through detailed view statistics.
4. Many users close the page if the ad covers up or obscures what they want to see and they will skip the content AND the ad.
5. And the user will try to search the content on other similar sites, making youtube in this case losing users in return.
I often watch ASMR videos at night with headphones on, to help me go to sleep, and these videos are either people whispering or speaking softly. So you turn the volume up on your phone/tablet, only to be blasted out of bed by some loud-ass ad. Personally? I’ll happily pay the $10.
Edited 2015-10-22 18:11 UTC
I don’t know for the rest of the world. But viewing Youtube in Argentina some ads in are not skippable. And this is not new.
But in those cases I close the video page and reopen it. Most of the time it won’t show that ad again.
Any luck this will fly and it’ll end me wasting time watching rubbish. Facebook next, thanks.
This’ll be pretty sweet with Google’s upcoming family plan.
Edited 2015-10-22 06:32 UTC
…to get ride of them
Please don’t ask for further limitations to force you into paying those damned $10. I think Google, well, Alphabet makes enough revenue not to have to go down that way. But who knows what shareholders wants for Christmas…
This isn’t just Google.
The people producing the content also need to get paid.
For a certain portion of the producers on YouTube it’s their only form of income.
The money they get from ads has been going down and down over the years. Just like websites. A advertiser pays less per viewed ad.
If I’m not mistaken the way they are going to do this is content producers will get a share of that US $9.99.
Now if this really system actually solves the problem. That I don’t know.
The content creators could do like Jack Douglass (Of “Your Grammar Sucks” and various tv shows fame with 2m subscribers) and do native ads in the video itself instead of relying on a service layer that can be blocked. It also guarantees that it is the proper sound levels.
Those ads are static. So those ads will be more expensive and stay there forever (no advertising for events like movie releases, etc.).
Also individual YouTuber couldn’t really do that in practice. ‘Luckily’ (there are problems there too) a lot of them are already connected to a ‘network’.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-channel_network
“keep videos running in the background on mobile. That means you can listen to a music video or a TED Talk while checking email or surfing Instagram”
The only non-multitasking smartphone I ever tried to use was ubuntu touch so I’m used to this kind of thing already working by default. Does android have a ‘pay for real multitasking’ option now or what is this?
> subscribers will be able keep videos running in the background on mobile. That means you can listen to a music video or a TED Talk while checking email or surfing Instagram.
I’m genuinely confused… my old, generic Android phone has been doing that since early this year. When I leave a playing YouTube video, the audio continues.
Is that feature being taken away from non-subscribers?
What are you using, FIrefox? With that I think you can do that, but if you use the youtube app or Chrome the video pauses.
On itself it is far from worth 9€ per month, but it makes the 9€ per month for Google Play Music much more enticing. Give me a family option, and I’m in.
I am very happy to have read this entire article and learn what you really get for your 10 dollar per month. Just to avoid the adds on youtube…no way.
For everything that they are offering now….Very likely yes!
Family-plan? No-brainer
When you host a party, those ads are just unbearable, intrusive. Who wants a blaring ad over his stereo? Who wants an ugly ad bar sitting at the bottom of the screen, masking stuff from the video, which you have to close manually when your are having fun with friends?
So while for isolated watching of one unique video on youtube it is not an issue, if you run a playlist, that makes the whole playlist thing pointless if you got no adblocker.
$10 is quite steep. That is the same price as a Netflix subscription.
I would be very happy to pay that much or even more for Google services, and also for things like Facebook and Windows, if that would mean I could opt-out from tracking. If those few dollars per month would turn me into an actual customer in company’s eyes, I would definitely pay and be happy to pay. But in current situation, I just don’t see the point. You can pay to remove some annoyances, but you will still be sodomized by other means, a company will still make additional money by selling you to advertisers.
I watch a lot of videos as well, but I get an ad every 3-4 videos and only about half are skippable.
I’ll be subscribing to support the content creators that I watch each and every single day, not just to dodge the ads. The offline part could be pretty nice too, depending on how it’s implemented. If I can download my subscriptions every night, and have them on my wifi tablet for the bus/train ride into work, this would be great.
In order not to be annoyed by ads we must pay Youtube. So they make money with or without ads. But they also get more people to login (in order to skip ads) which means they are better able to tell what sort of videos people watch as individuals. Tracking. Not healthy for dissidents of the overseers. One step closer to 1984.
I wonder how soon they start putting irrelevant or commercial link into their search results. It’s so simple to enforce that only Search Red subscribes will get a real links.
I wish we had a FreeTube.
In my currency, the amount is: Php 4,500.00+/month, 15 days worth of work at minimum wage.
However, we are not the target market.