Slashdot Mirror
Google To Offer Ad-Free YouTube - At a Price
First time accepted submitter totalcaos writes YouTube announced today its plans for an ad-free, subscription-based service by way of an email sent out to YouTube Partners. The email details the forthcoming option, which will offer consumers the choice to pay for an "ads-free" version of YouTube for a monthly fee. The additional monetization option requires partners to agree to updated terms on YouTube's Creator Studio Dashboard, which notes that the changes will go into effect on June 15, 2015. We talked about the possibility of an ad-free model back in October.
My youtube ad blocker works perfectly. I never see advertisements while watching youtube.
I'd happily pay for the ad blocker. I won't pay google for the joy of them not spamming me.
I like the concept of paying for content to support my usage instead of going through annoying ads, but I don't use Youtube all that often, usually only because someone else has given me a link to something in particular. Those 30 second ads which sometimes lets you skip after 5 seconds and sometimes don't let you skip at all are really annoying. I hope that they give a low-tier option. For example $1 per year which is good for ad-free (or no forced ads) up to 500 videos.
The most important thing is that I hope that the subscription options are compelling enough that someone would WANT to use it over the use of an Adblocker without any Adblocking counter-measures put in place.
If it is successful (for consumers) it would be great if an ad-free pass could be extended across any other websites too that participate, not just Youtube.
I use Adblock because the quality of advertising is too invasive, not because I don't to deprive websites of revenue.
From my experience and knowledge, browsers on mobile devices don't have ad blocker plugins, and certainly the youtube apps for mobile platforms don't have them. I guess that's the market they're aiming for.
They have heard of adblock. In fact, when I specifically requested to pay them so they could pay the content creators without showing me ads, they refused and even mentioned ad blocking. Note my motivation in that sentence; this is actually a feature requested by some of us. This announcement got my hopes up just a bit, but it remains to be seen if it's like the offline watching, which was riddled with strange restrictions, never worked properly, and was quietly removed. I see they're still talking about that in the future tense.
I teach language classes, and this would be useful since I often use Youtube to show songs, listening exercises, etc. Sometimes I'm forced to use the in-class room computer, and nothing throws off a listening exercise like warming everyone up, getting their mental schemata activated, and then some ridiculous ad immediately preceding a listening. I hope that perhaps my university could get some sort of educational rate, since this is really for my work rather than my personal use.
I'd also love to make the scourge of autoplay go away somehow - suddenly it's everywhere that shows videos.
Correction: That's how marketing scum wants it to work.
As was said, it's my machine. It runs code and downloads data _I_ want, not you. Don't like it? Go invent your own Internet with your own protocols that grant you more control and stop freeloading on the open protocols we already have!
Of course it runs NetBSD. BTC: 1NT7QvbetmANwaMzhpVL6
No legal obligation.
No other obligation either.
But suppose I watch the ads, do I then have an obligation to change my buying patterns, or is it okay to freeload on the creative effort it took to make the ad, and the bandwidth required to serve it ?