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by cameronbrown 2495 days ago
Disclaimer: Opinions are my own etc..

I personally think a better way to sell YouTube Premium wouldn't be to focus on just the ads, yes that should be a part of it, but consumers have shown they want certain things in particular (via Patreon):

1. A way to support their favourite creators (adblock whitelisting proves people care more about creators than the downsides of ads - I do for sure)

2. A way to get exclusive content in return, or maybe just a shoutout.

Super Chat is one of the best things YouTube has ever done in this regard. It's amazing how much money flows through to creators when they do live-streams & premiere events.

A lesson can be learned from Steam's fight with piracy wrt ad-free versions. You've either got to:

1. Make it an easier sell to purchase YouTube Premium than to get AdBlock (not-likely)

2. Make a significant value-add for the premium offering "be a better service than piracy".

The problem is that YouTube's not been doing too well with option two, and they're simultaneously making their advertising products a worse sell for business customers.

I'm very interested to see how they adapt to the changing market though.