Very dependent on location. I pay $18 for a sandwich and $5.50 for a latte, so this seems pretty cheap in comparison. I'd pay for it in a heartbeat. YouTube Premium at $14/mo is IMO one of the best value subscriptions out there.
I'd pay 5.5 for a delicious latte that will push me through my day, produced by a shop that cares about quality and that I also want to stay in business. There's a lot of strings attached to the price tag.
I use so much YouTube, the bundling didn't bother me. I didn't initially care about YouTube Music, but after giving it a try I find it better than Spotify for my purposes anyway so it worked out.
Youtube's relationship with the music industry has led to this weird situation where they basically cannot separate the licensing concerns, hence the pack-in of the music service. I respect that you want to dig your heels in on some weird principle of not paying for something twice, but on a pure time-value-of-money basis, pretty much any music or video streaming service is worth the subscription if you use it more than a couple of hours each month.
When you subscribe to YouTube for ad-free content, you're essentially paying for an uninterrupted viewing experience.
This is similar to how you'd expect no ads when you pay for a service like Netflix.
For example, imagine watching "The Matrix" on Netflix and being unexpectedly interrupted by an Oreo commercial—it would be frustrating, especially since you paid for an ad-free experience.
The issue with YouTube is that if they were to remove baked-in in-stream ads for Premium users, it might require them to compensate content creators more indirectly, which in turn could reduce Google's profits.
This creates a financial disincentive for YouTube to fully eliminate ads.
As a result, you might find be better if you use software like SponsorBlock.
This situation is paradoxical; ideally, paying customers should receive the best user experience directly from the platform, and be rewarded for that.
Technically, there is no limitation, LinusTechTips can perfectly take 1 minute to add a marker for its sponsored segments, at the moment he ticks "This video contains sponsored content".
A more truthful description for YouTube Premium could be: "Pay 10 USD / month, to remove a lot of, but not all the ads", and then you understand it's not that of a good deal.
No, I pay YouTube to not show me YouTube ads. Separately, I also pay several content creators for their content without ads. I pay the person showing me ads to stop showing me ads.
> Wouldn't you get upset if Netflix is streaming to you "The Matrix", and in the middle of it there is an advertising for Oreos?
If that ad is a part of the movie as it was shown in theatres or on other streaming services, then no, I wouldn't be upset at Netflix.
> "The Matrix", and in the middle of it there is an advertising for Oreos, though you paid for the ad-free experience
Interesting that you picked a movie series quite well known for it's product placement marketing-- I'm sure if Nabisco had been on board, the Oracle would happily have given Neo an Oreo instead of a fresh baked chocolate chip cookie.
ARPU is an average so it includes every user, including users that never buy anything from an ad because they can't afford it. The average goes up a lot due to a minority of wealthy users. Those users will also be more likely to pay to remove ads. So Meta is afraid that the ad revenue will go down a lot and that's why they increase the monthly subscription by more than the current ARPU.
This is similar to collective insurance. If the rich people all self-insure and remove themselves from the pool, the viability of the collective insurance gets risked because you're only left off with the people that actually need help and nobody with a surplus to share.
For ads you get left off with a cohort of users that can't afford to pay to remove ads so can't also afford to pay for stuff advertised in said ads. Which means the ads will become more like TV ads for awareness rather than direct purchase, which will lower ad-based ARPU.
Wouldn't you also need to factor in that the people who will pay to avoid ads are likely already using ad blockers (or hate ads, in which case showing them an ad for your product is likely counter-productive)?
It's per Q so ~80/years. Difference between $80 (average ad revenue per year) vs $120 per year subscription is reasonable as subscriptions skew power users.
Not universally, it all depends on how one values the use/enjoyment/value that they get out of the experience, and everybody values their time/enjoyment/convenience differently.
Wouldn't that mean that Facebook could charge a lower ad-subsidized price? Facebook earns 18/user*year - so 10/month is adding a 100$ surcharge to not see ads. If they offered an ad laden service for 8/mo and the ad-free experience for 10/mo that'd line up with your logic.