So you’re interested in ad free YouTube, are you? I totally get it! As a daily YouTube user, the ads you’re constantly bombarded with can really take their toll on you, even more so since they started placing two ads one after another before the video even starts!
Luckily for you, an ad free YouTube is an option, and a very popular one too!
In this article, we’ll look at why YouTube has ads in the first place and what purpose they serve, and then we’ll go into how to get YouTube without ads. Let’s go!
Quick Links
- Why does YouTube have ads?
- Types of YouTube ads
- Have YouTube ads increased in recent years?
- What is YouTube Premium?
- When was ad free YouTube introduced?
- Why was YouTube Premium introduced?
- How much does YouTube Premium cost?
- Are there other ways to get YouTube without ads?
Why does YouTube have ads?
First things first, we should probably address the elephant in the room – why does YouTube have ads in the first place?
Well, to put it simply, advertising is the price you pay for a free platform.
Because you don’t have to pay to use YouTube, Alphabet (the company that owns Google, who in turn owns YouTube) needs to make money from it somehow. And the best way to do that is to allow advertisers to pay for ads.
And clearly it’s working – you only need to look at the $28.8 billion dollars YouTube made from selling ads in 2021.
Types of YouTube Ads
There are three main types of YouTube ads – embedded ads, sponsored videos, and landing page ads. Let’s have a quick look at each.
Embedded Ads
Embedded ads are the ads you’ll be most familiar with. These are the ads that play when you first load up a YouTube video (pre-roll ads), as well as the ads that play at various points in the middle of longer videos (mid-roll ads).
Above is an example of a pre-roll ad on my iPhone.
Sponsored Videos (aka In-Feed Video Ads)
Sponsored video ads, also known as in-feed video ads, are YouTube ads you’ll often see at the top of the search results when searching for a video.
Landing Page Ads (aka Masthead ads)
Landing page ads, also known as Masthead ads, are the huge banner ads you’ll see on the YouTube homepage.
Have YouTube Ads Increased in Recent Years?
In short, yes.
This is evident in a lot of ways, but none more so than the doubling up of ads at the start of a video.
Look again at the screenshot of the pre-roll ad from my iPhone. Can you see the yellow circle in the bottom left corner? You can see the ad I was watching was just the first of two ads.
This doubling up of ads means that, fairly easily, YouTube can get you to watch more adverts, meaning they can make more money selling those ad slots to advertisers.
You could also make the argument that, as annoying as it is, from YouTube’s point of view it’s easier to get you to agree with watching two ads at the start of a video than it would be to introduce more ad breaks during a video.
For further proof, look no further than YouTube’s advertising revenue.
Earlier we mentioned that YouTube made $28.8 billion from selling ads in 2021. But how does that compare to previous years?
Well this handy graph put together by Statista shows that ad revenue has been increasing steadily in each of the last 5 years, but grew especially much in 2021 – a whopping 45.88% compared to 2020!
So it is fair to say that, as many people have picked up on, the number of ads on YouTube has increased in recent years, and YouTube has been effective in getting us all to watch more ads.
Ad Free YouTube – Enter YouTube Premium
What is YouTube Premium?
YouTube Premium is YouTube’s paid subscription service, allowing you to watch YouTube videos without ads.
It also comes with some other benefits, like being able to download content for watching offline, being able to listen to YouTube videos in the background while you’re using other apps, as well as access to YouTube Music (YouTube’s music streaming platform).
It is the easiest and most efficient way of getting rid of YouTube ads.
When Was Ad Free YouTube introduced?
This one is actually a bit trickier than it appears.
Technically, YouTube Premium was announced on May 17th, 2018.
However, Youtube Premium is actually a rebrand of YouTube Red, which was launched on October 31st, 2015. And YouTube Red was a rebrand of Music Key, which was launched on November 14th, 2014.
Why was YouTube Premium introduced?
YouTube Premium was introduced, to put it simply, because the subscription business model is much more preferable than the advertising model that YouTube was strictly on before YouTube Premium.
For example, as lucrative as a subscription model can be, one of the biggest disadvantages of it is that it is highly cyclical in nature, meaning it is highly exposed to the economic cycles we go through.
When times are tough and money is hard to come by, people naturally tighten up their purses and save more than they normally would. This increased saving means fewer purchases are made, which in turn means advertisers advertise less (i.e they spend less on advertising), because there’s no point.
Why would they spend money advertising if it’s not going to convince you to buy their products?
With the subscription model however, people are paying you a subscription fee every month, regardless of what is going on in the economy.
Sure you may have a few people cancel their subscription if they’re trying to save more (especially if they can still watch YouTube for free if they’re willing to put up with a few ads), but the majority of people who subscribe to YouTube do so only because they use it so much, so it likely wouldn’t be one of the first things they stop paying for.
Also, if those users do choose to stop subscribing, YouTube can still show them ads and make money from them that way!
How much does YouTube Premium cost?
– As of writing, YouTube Premium costs £11.99 a month here in the UK, or $11.99 a month in the US.
So that monthly £11.99 or $11.99 is the price you’ll have to pay to get rid of ads on YouTube. A small price to pay, we think, and clearly a lot of others think that too – YouTube reported through their YouTube Official Blog that they had more than 50 million people subscribed to YouTube Premium and/or YouTube Music.
Are there other ways to get YouTube without ads?
Yes, there are ad blockers. These, as the name suggests, are apps you can download that are designed to block ads loading on a webpage, giving you an ad free YouTube.
While ad blockers are legal, they do have some downsides. The main downside is that they will not work on mobile, i.e. with the YouTube apps on iOS and Android. To block ads here, the only way is through subscribing to YouTube Premium.
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