With YouTube Premium subscriptions now surpassing 125 million paying customers, YouTube’s expanding its “Premium Lite” offering, providing another option for those looking to get rid of interruptive YouTube ads.
As explained by YouTube:
“Today we’ll begin expanding our Premium Lite pilot to users in the U.S. Premium Lite gives viewers a new, more affordable way to enjoy most videos on YouTube ad-free for $7.99 per month. In the coming weeks, we’ll also make Premium Lite available to all users in our current pilot countries – Thailand, Germany, and Australia.”
As you can see in the lower note, Premium Lite users may still see some ads in some areas. But for the most part, ads go away if you pay.
Originally launched in testing last year, Premium Lite offers a more affordable option for those looking to remove ads from their YouTube experience. Which has long been a key selling point of its Premium offering, and Lite offers you a way to do that, and only that, by paying a monthly fee instead.
As you can see in the image above, the more expensive YouTube Premium package also provides access to YouTube Music, as well as background play, while Premium Lite offers another, cheaper option for those who just hate ads.
Which is evidently a lot of YouTube users, though even then, it is worth noting that only a fraction of YouTube’s audience actually pay for its Premium service.
YouTube reportedly has around 2.5 million monthly active users, which means that only 5% of YouTube’s user base pay to use the app. Paid social subscriptions became a point of contention in 2023, when Elon Musk revealed his plan for Twitter (now X) to eventually generate 50% of its income from user subscriptions.
That hasn’t happened, and the key flaw in this strategy is that, historically, very few users are actually willing to pay for access to platforms that they can alternatively access for free.
Like, yeah, it would be more convenient to not have ads, but if I can save a few dollars, I’ll deal with it.
That’s even more pressing in the current economic environment, and none of the newly added social subscription offerings (X Premium, Meta Verified, Snapchat+) have actually made significant inroads as a key revenue driver for any app.
Basically, it’s really hard to get people to pay for something if they don’t have to, and while YouTube Premium does offer some compelling features, the vast majority of users will just continue on without.
That’s not to say this is a pointless offering, as clearly each platform generates a good level of supplemental income from these options. But they will remain supplemental, and no platform has got close to making these a more significant revenue option.
Either way, YouTube will likely rope in a few more million with this new offering, as it continues to expand its paid add-on service.
