Some YouTube Premium subscribers complain of seeing ads
Over the past few weeks, some users are posting complaints on Reddit saying they are seeing ads despite being YouTube Premium subscriber.
If this goes live, I'm out. YT premium is my most expensive subscription, but I watch enough YouTube that I'm OK with it, especially considering that it supports creators more than ad viewers. If I still get ads? Nah dawg. I'll divy up that money amongst patreons or whatever, and install add blockers.
If your main reason for paying premium is for ad blocking, I’d suggest just cancelling it now and using ad blockers. If you want to support creators, I’d say that it’s better to cancel and subscribe to a few patreons - I’d pick some of the smaller creators you like, to spread some of that support around a bit.
If you use iOS devices for watching YouTube, look into side-loading uYou+, it’s basically an edited YouTube app that removes most of the ads. You can stream from your phone to the apple TV, too, also without ads.
Not sure what the android equivalent is, but someone else will know - hopefully they will share in the comments also.
ReVanced is great on Android, it also enables other YouTube premium features such as picture-in-picure mode.
You're suggesting turning a $15 or so YouTube bill into a $50+ Patreon bill depending on what creators they watch
SmartTubeNext has been working fairly well for me for like 5 years or something. It's super easy to side load on a Fire stick.
u/Dangerous-Pizza7054 from the article,
Seems like the user tracking "special promotion" overrides the premium. They don't even say whether it's expected or not. But my take away is that paying for premium may or may not show you ads, but you are definitely tracked and harvested for data. (Maybe even more so, since, well, you are more valuable to them.)
ublock is cheaper and actually works
So premium users put their data on a pedestal for Google? That's fun
That's generally; if you have an account, you are easier to track for them.
I got the same Sunday banner in the middle of the screen similar to where shorts show up. Never in my life have I watched or cared for American football. Clearly a waste of money for the advertising company since I just closed it by pressing the x same as shorts on desktop.
Well yes, you didn't get first ads. But what about second ads?
That has been my specific issue with paying for any Google product always. I understand when I am using a product for free that I am not necessarily the customer and that money has to be made off of me or the users more generally somehow. That's "fine" (ish, not really, but that has more to do with issues of security than anything).
However when I pay for a product or service, I want to now be the customer and I want to be in control of my data and have the company cater to me. If, when paying for a Google service, there was some legally relevant things in place that insured I was no longer being tracked and used to generate revenue via third parties I would gladly pay. Probably more than they are charging now, but instead they want to have it both ways which is just not OK with me.
At least a subscription includes YouTube music? Isn't that interesting and relevant.
That part of the support email almost made me puke of how fucking awful it was. "Why complain about ads when you get YouTube Music for free by paying us money"
I would cancel that subscription SOOO FAST.
I'd argue that YTMusic is a superior product to YT, but both put together aren't worth anywhere near the cost. You can get a premium TV/Movie service for that price with family access.
Wait, I haven't seen ads on YouTube Premium (yet), and I'm just now realizing this could very likely be because Google knows my wife and I don't watch sports.
"With YouTube Premium, enjoy ad-free access, downloads, and background play on YouTube and YouTube Music."
In Australia, if they reneg on this headline promise, doesn't matter what's in the fine print, this would be refundable under Australian Consumer Law (not a lawyer).
What bullshit, and how silly on their part, since it's just so much more convenient to block ads instead of paying
We've GOT A PAYERR OVER HEREEEEE!!!!!!!
What ads? (User without premium, but proper browser and adblocker)
Firebox mobile + unlock origin extension + YouTube.com.
You get everything that YouTube premium can offer. Including screen off play.
What I find the most hilarious is that on a rooted Android phone there is an app that hooks into the YouTube app and eliminates adds in it. Even when my PC with Firefox and UBlock get temporarily blocked in the battle between Google and ad blockers my phone using the standard app still doesn't have adds.
I don't know something about it is very satisfying to me.
whos gonna prosecute any of this shit now
Oh they will prosecute! They will prosecute people with adblocks and alternative clients.
I'd bet that channel "members" don't get ads for that channel regardless of premium status.
IMO, Google made premium, almost nobody bought it. So they went after adblockers, hoping that people would get premium to get rid of the ads. People most just Adblock harder.
While this is happening, one exec is peering over the fence at twitch. Where they only way to get away from ads without a pretty good Adblock, is to subscribe to the individual creator.
So they make "memberships" to channels a thing.
Almost nobody buys that either. So they go... What if, even if someone is premium, we give them ads, unless they're a channel member.
Genius.
Paying to block ads per creator/channel/whatever, is a special level of bullshit that twitch has always had.
The system is working as expected. The companies are trying to find the best way to extract the most value from you using their platform.
People are buying memberships though?
Usually you see this for creators like vtubers.
I like them but I will never consider memberships. At best I will sub to an actual service like floatplane or nebula
This is all conjecture right?
Indeed. I have absolutely no way of knowing anything for certain.
I'm just screaming into the void from this hellscape we call Earth.
The second i see an ad in cancelling my subscription
Same.
You do see ads, you just don't realize it. There are multiple 1-2 minute videos on your feed usually with the title "Introducing [insert product]" and these are product placements that YouTube is very well aware of. They also had the audacity to tell me that these are ads but they don't "interfere" with me watching videos. So, they are injecting ads into premium subscriber feeds already. Disgusting company.
That's true.
I can skip those at least. And do with sponsorblock
This is why I stopped paying them. Fuck them, you're just an source of income to them.
I mean, yeah, what kind of relationship did you expect?
They're not running youtube for the good of their heart
Lol godamnit I just found out YouTube is a business, you're getting downvoted!
Side loading works great for this and it's free
I use New Pipe for android and Freetube for desktop. I have all the YouTube premium features at $0 cost and no ads hehe
I use revanced, it's good
I haven't been able to use new pipe since a few months back, did they fix it?
My NewPipe hasn't broken for a significant time in quite a while, it's good to go in my experience
Yeah I stopped paying for premium once I’d figured out using Safari on my phone with an ad blocker works with YouTube still lol
I use Firefox with ublock on my phone and I get no ads. Or I watch them in Newpipe.
Which adblocker are you using on iOS?
It is just YT testing new exciting features, nothing to worry about.
One of my biggest issues with the ads is that they're mostly scams. I just get ads for shit I know isn't real
My tipping point was YouTube serving the same one ad months on end to me.
I was fine with ads a decade ago. I tolerated them increasing the amount five-fold over the years. But that was borderline torture, and getting an adblock was the only working solution.
Omg the Temu ad bombardment made me pull my hair out
Don't worry, simply pay for Youtube Premium+ to get rid of ads on Premium!
This is normal, nothing to see here... except these wonderful ads!! - YouTube
A/b testing or code error?
With Alphabet, I treat anything related to delivering more ads as intentional.
Grayjay on Android has been working damn near flawlessly for me. No clue if the parent company is to be trusted at this point or not- but I cannot argue with the results.
I much prefer Newpipe, which has been amazing so far.
Were you able to import your subscriptions? I haven't been able to and that's all that's keeping me on Premium
Yeah, logging in pulled across everything, as far as I can tell. Subscriptions included!
Needs an ATV app.
I'd never heard of FUTO. It's been around for a year and I can find so little information.
I know Louis Rossman is involved. I don't agree with some of his views, but as far as tech freedom goes he seems to have the right idea.
I've been using thus too. Works great.
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Youtube Premium plus Ultra!
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Suckers paying for it
Good, I hope they raise pricing too and pay creators even less. Make it hurt. It's the only language users understand apparently.
Or sometimes it doesn't let me play YouTube in a minimized floating way. Seems to be if I've been going back and forth between horizontal and vertical vids. Both normally allow floating minimized play but something about how they interact often leads me to having to force close the app, which loses me the custom queue I've been constructing. If the official solution is buggy...
Grayjay be like
I just can't take an article complaining about ads seriously when it's that peppered with ads …
They are "complaining" (more like reporting) about ads for people who paid to not have any.
Do you have a subscription with this media company?
This looks like either a bug in the platform or people with Premium Lite. The article made no attempt at investigating this because all they did was to reprint complaints from anonymous people on Reddit. Customer support offering boilerplate reply about why someone is seeing ads sounds like par for the course here because it’s all either LLM chatbots or people in third world countries who couldn’t care less.