I don’t think it’s just me, but I feel sure that adverts on YouTube have become a lot more intrusive than they used to be. These days, I rarely manage to complete watching a YouTube post without adverts, both long and short formats, frequently interrupting the flow.
YouTube also keep trying to push me to subscribe to their YouTube Premium service, but since this costs €11.99 per month – well, I’m damned if I’m going to pay that much. I’ll just continue to curse YouTube and their adverts.
Today, however, I noticed something interesting: they’ve introduced a “YouTube Premium Lite” tier for €6.99 per month. This does not include the YouTube Music service or the ability to download content for offline viewing, so it seems to be aimed specifically at providing an Ad-free experience.
Apparently, Google are testing the waters here; Premium Lite is only available in a handful of European countries.
Well, it is certainly cheaper than Premium, and I am primarily interested in an Ad-free experience, so is it worth it to me?
I pay WordPress €30 per annum to keep my blog Ad-free for my readers. That, I think is acceptable, and all my readers experience this for free. To ask every consumer almost three times that amount to experience an Ad-free YouTube does seem to be pushing things a bit far. I suspect I’ll just continue cursing Google, YouTube and their intrusive adverts.
AdBlock seems to be able to prevent me seeing ads in YT videos.
Yes, but unfortunately YouTube don’t view that kindly. They are going to block the ad-blockers…
Pants!
Perhaps the blockers will be able to counter that effort. These situations are often an arms race.
I.ve been staying away from YouTube altogether. I also pay WordPress for ad-free sites, three of them, and I have moved several others to paid-hosting just to relieve my few viewers from the evermore annoying and disgusting ads. A few years back, WordPress managed just fine, and grew, with just a few, small, decent ads. Now greed seems to have taken over everywhere.
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