[danShumway]

I subscribed to Youtube Premium when it came out, back when it was still called Youtube Red. I've written a couple of times in the past about why I eventually gave up on the service. I can dig some of those comments up if you want me to but the short version is: not only am I willing to pay for content, I have subscribed and paid for content through the exact option you describe and it wasn't the cost that drove me away.

I will also point out, Youtube Premium is not primarily an ad-free Youtube service (and neither was Youtube Red, it also came bundled with Google Play Music). It is a paid video service and music service that happens to also contain ad-free viewing. Youtube Premium Lite did exist as an ad-free Youtube service. Google axed it.

They axed it because Google doesn't want that -- it does not want to have a service that is priced around specifically the cost of removing ads from Youtube. Of course they axed Youtube Premium Lite, because Google wants to have a cable package, and then to be able to point to that cable package and say "see how expensive ad-free viewing is?"

It would be a long conversation to talk about why that bundling is problematic, both from a competitive standpoint (see Amazon Prime) and from a "support creators" standpoint (the amount of money going back to creators is much lower than they'll get from direct support). But I'm going to keep going back to -- there is no option to pay specifically to remove ads from Youtube; Google killed that service and it's now only available as part of a bundling system with other services.