YouTube is finally rolling out Premium Lite in the USA (coming soon to Thailand, Germany, and Australia). For the princely sum of $7.99 per month, Google is promising subscribers a mostly ad-free experience.
Although Premium Lite offers an official way to remove ads, it won’t hide those baked directly into videos by creators. That’s right, even if you shell out for this plan, you’ll still have to sit through sponsored segments for VPNs, meal kits, and mobile games, because YouTube can’t really do anything about those. Quite frankly, that just doesn’t seem fair.
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The company claims this expansion helps creators and partners by generating more revenue, but let’s be real, y’all — it is about getting more money out of users who just want to watch a five-minute tech review without sitting through two pre-rolls and a mid-video ad.
YouTube, which has been waging war against ad-blocking lately, breaking videos and throwing up constant nags to push people into paying, says it’ll keep expanding Premium Lite, but unless it finds a way to block those in-video sponsor spots, I’ll have to pass.
Image credit: Wirestock / depositphotos
