1 month ago
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YouTube briefly offered a Premium Lite subscription for select nations in the EU before discontinuing it in October 2023. This tier costs half as much as the Premium and offers an ad-free viewing experience without any of the other perks associated with the full-priced Premium subscription. Recent reports, along with a confirmation to Android Authority, confirm that the Premium Lite is coming back, but it seems like it’ll no longer be completely ad-free.
Recently, some screenshots spotted by multiple users on Reddit and Threads (via Android Authority) began to emerge where they spotted a new Premium Lite option while signing up for a paid tier. The Lite was shown as almost half of the regular Premium’s price, with the Premium priced at $22.99 and the Lite at $11.99.
Just a day later, Google confirmed to the site that the Lite tier is making a return. “We’re testing a different version of Premium Lite, and some users in Australia, Germany, and Thailand may see the option to sign up,” it said. It remains unclear exactly how this version will be different and whether or not it will become available in the US.
However, there was something in those screenshots that caught our attention. This time, unlike the first time the Premium Lite was available, it doesn’t offer a completely ad-free experience and has quietly changed that to “Limited ads” instead. I’m not on YouTube Premium yet, and I was considering signing up for the Lite if it comes to the US, but the limited ads feature put me off. This is mainly because an ad-free experience is all that the Lite tier offers (and it did). The rest of the perks—offline downloads, background play, and YouTube Music Premium—are all features of YouTube Premium. So, it’s a bummer to know that it will no longer do the one job it has—remove ads.
I’m hoping things might change when the tier is officially rolled out. It’s confusing what Google is trying to do with shutting down the Lite subscription just two years after introducing it in 2021, limiting availability for specific countries in the EU, suddenly bringing the tier back in such a discreet manner, and bringing “limited” ads to it.
With the recent crackdown on one of the most popular adblockers in the world (and my past favorite), uBlock Origin, I need confirmation on the Premium Lite’s details more than ever now. The Verge recently reported that the adblocker is seeing a complete phaseout as Chrome has started to automatically disable the extension. uBlock Origin developer Raymond Hill reposted a tweet that showed Chrome informing a user about the adblocker being “no longer supported.”
Google’s war against adblockers isn’t new. Just a few months ago, it rolled out a new defense strategy that automatically skipped videos to the end whenever you tried to watch YouTube with an adblocker enabled. It also tested showing viewers a painfully long and non-skippable loading screen to deter them from using adblocking extensions.
So far, at least, adblockers have always reverse-engineered Google’s code quite quickly and tackled every new strategy that YouTube incorporated. The complete withdrawal of support for uBlock Origin and a more affordable tier for an ad-free (or limited ads) experience make it clear that Google is tired of this years-long cat-and-mouse game between its products (YouTube) and adblockers. It wishes to completely do away with shortcuts that won’t fill up its pockets and, instead, introduce more palatable solutions that users are more inclined to sign up for.
