Google’s new YouTube Premium Lite subscription tier will offer a slightly-less-ad free video watching experience… with some caveats.
YouTube remains incredibly popular for video streaming purposes whether you’re after instructions on how to avoid scams or you just want to watch a cute cat video or, indeed, if you don’t yet know about the terrible secret of space.
Like most of the rest of Google, YouTube runs on an advertising basis, but lots of people don’t like ads that much as part of their video feed.
Google’s official answer to this has long been YouTube Premium, a $16.99/month subscription service that removes advertising from YouTube while also offering other features such as YouTube Music and offline downloads to its users. Over time, however, the price of YouTube Premium has crept up.
Google’s been experimenting with a “lite” version of YouTube Premium, and today it’s made it official (in the US), as well as noting that it will come to other countries including Australia “in the coming weeks”.
Before I go any further, however..
Ethical disclaimer: Part of how ART makes what money it does is through YouTube, so I do have an interest here in supporting creators; frankly I’d be happier to be reader/viewer supported than have ads in the flow. If you’re a YouTube Premium subscriber, yes, that does count towards my being able to continue producing content here.
For more on ART’s Ethics policy, see here.
What’s the difference between YouTube Premium Lite and YouTube Premium?
In a word, advertising.
While YouTube Premium Lite will cut some ads from YouTube Premium, it’s not just the same thing for less money, because, well, Google would like money. It’s still Google.
YouTube Premium offers up YouTube Music ad-free, and that won’t be the case for YouTube Premium Lite. It also offers downloads and background play features, and again, not for Premium Lite subscribers. YouTube Premium also has a more pricey $32.99 “Family” membership that allows for up to five accounts, but there’s no equivalent YouTube Premium Lite family offering — or at least not for now.
YouTube Premium Lite: Alex’s Take
The bigger catch that I can see is the precise wording that Google’s putting on where you won’t see ads if you’re a YouTube Premium Lite subscriber. Its wording states – and I quote –
Most Videos Ad Free: Gaming, Fashion, Beauty, News and more
While also noting that:
For Premium Lite, ads may appear on music content, Shorts, and when you search or browse
Those two things are not quite the same.
Honestly, I could deal with the idea that an ad tile might appear when I’m browsing or searching, but the line about “most” videos being ad-free with specific genres highlighted gives a lot of wriggle room for ads to appear in the flow if they either fall outside the scope of those genres, or honestly if they’re part of a search or browsing session.
My own YouTube watching – and with full disclosure in mind, I’m currently a YouTube Premium subscriber — is a mix of watching subscribed channels (cough… go subscribe to ART here… cough), a touch of algorithmic content and a quantity of searched content. I don’t honestly use YouTube Music all that much, though I do know folks who see it as a core part of the value of a YouTube Premium subscription.
Within a YouTube Premium Lite viewing session my own habits might see me hit with absolutely no ads, or some, or maybe some all the time.
My inner cynic says that Google will do a hell of a lot of A/B testing on a continuous basis to see exactly how far they can push that envelope while still collecting subscription money… and that might not end up making YouTube Premium Lite all that much of a bargain at all.
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