YouTube Premium is now showing ads

This is apparently from an ad-supported tier being trialled in EU and not them sneaking ads into an ad free tier. Read comments below for more context.

This thread was reported for being misleading but I'm going to leave it up for the context.

There is a lower price tier of Youtube premium being tested in Europe right now that has ads, but still gives offline viewing and youtube music. This is what that is for. People who are seeing ads know exactly why they are seeing ads; because they signed up for a plan with ads. The regular plan at the regular price is still ad free.

I think you're mistaken about what this lower price tier offers. It is still ad-free, except for Youtube Music which is ad-supported. If a regular YouTube video uses a song that belongs to the YouTube Music catalog, it will have ads as normal. Also, this tier doesn't offer background playback (with the phone screen turned off).
- https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/17/24272930/youtube-cheaper-premium-lite-subscription-limited-ads
  
  has more info and explains, ads are expected.
  
  It's stupid to pay and still get ads, but that is how it's presented.
- You are correct, maybe? I say maybe because I see now the original info that I was reading was speculation from last month, however, new information is sparse and every site seems to contradict the others. Honestly, now I don't know what they are doing with it. Regardless, it is a separate tier of a plan, so those that are seeing ads signed up for a plan that includes ads in some form or another. It's not like Google just started sneaking ads into the full premium tier without warning, which what this post and the others like it that I've seen are rage baiting for.
The literal opposite of what people¹ want then. Give me back the €5 no ads, no yt music and no off app viewing and I will consider enabling the app and remove the YouTube adblockers in my browser.

¹ People as in me. I am at least one people.

Bruh, why pay for Youtube in the first place? Fuck them

Google is an advertising company, never expect anything better than that.

If my youtube premium gets ads its back to ad block.

When I had Premium for the whole family, they were also showing ads AND still using trackers.

I emailed Google support about it, and they said it was a "bug". I cancelled soon after.

The only reason that I (and I suspect many many other people) pay for it is because of the value proposition of not having ads on Youtube + Youtube Music for slightly more than Spotify. They better be careful about their subscriptions because their service is also available for free. If I feel like im being ripped off, instead of them getting 12$ a month they will get 0$ and I will still get to use the service. It's different from Netflix in that in their case there is no free tier to go back to.

Free tier for YouTube = no ads with unblock origin. Free tier for Netflix = just pirate the movies and shows. There's probably a way to block ads in Spotify too idk
- Ublock origin also works to stop ads in the Spotify web player.

Fuck YouTube!

Oh hell no, not after they started raising prices in other countries. I don't want to pirate again.

All you have to do is install Ublock...
- I'm amazed it still works that well to be honest. Have it on Firefox on my phone as well 👌🏼
- Who tf pirates YouTube

I'm always so appalled and offended when I go on YouTube and there's a 60 and even 90 second and. Wtf year so you think this is YouTube? I'm not watching 60 seconds of ass. Funny thing is if I keep pressing back and play, after 2 or 3 times it goes down to a 5 second ad, so I at least know how to bypass those long ones

Didnt noticed it with smarttube https://smarttubeapp.github.io/ or https://github.com/polymorphicshade/Tubular ;)

I love SmartTube but the vast majority of the time I find content doesnt work anymore and just says "Applying the fix..." For 10 mins.

Been using NewPipe for years. What are ads?

That app stopped working on me like 2 months back and never worked again so I deleted it
- Very weird, I am using it daily and it works just fine. Maybe you're using an older version? Rather than using F-Droid's repo, I use NewPipe's own.

I have grandfathered in YouTube premium from like 10 years ago because of a business cell phone promotion deal. I have not seen a single ad yet.

This is something new they’re testing primarily in EU. There are plans to separate the premium into tiers and one tier will have ads. Even in the US, there are currently ads in your home feed such as product placement videos. When I contacted support about this, they told me they knew they were ads, it’s just that it does not interfere with watching videos. Disgusting fucking company.

I guess it's not premium enough.

It reminds me of Unlimited data mobile services in which the data is not turned off or surcharged but throttled to a crawl after a limited time. We've not since been able to get a straight answer from any of the major telecom providers.

Marx predicts enshittification in Das Kapital

Wow, they really downsized the Barbie… same price?

Some of them may be hardware related - any time I sign in to one of my TCL TV's with a Premium account, the first result in any search is always one marked Sponsored. It's gash, but it doesn't happen on any other of my devices than that TCL TV which makes me think it's some sort of vendor problem.

Either way, YouTube/Google/Alphabet/whoever won't give a fuck so if it's that bad, then vote with your wallet.