Youtube preparing to launch a subscription option that removes ads

Youtube fans are certainly accustomed at this point to the 5-10 second ads that pop up for the majority of videos on the network. While some users are just fine with dealing with the ads in order to see the content behind them, others probably wish there was a way to remove the video ads for good. If you fall into that second group, you might be happy to learn that YouTube is in fact planning a new monthly ad-free subscription service.

In the past we’ve heard whispers on the web about how Youtube might be planning such a service, but this time the word comes from a more official source — Youtube itself. Active channel operators, including Android Authority, have received emails about how Google is planning a subscription-based option and that it intends to share a portion of the revenue from this service with content providers.

Your fans want choices. Not only do they want to watch what they want, whenever they want, anywhere, and on any device they choose, they want YouTube features built specifically with their needs in mind. Over the past several months, we’ve taken bold new steps to bring these experiences to life. Since inviting hundreds of thousands of fans into our YouTube Music Key Beta, we’ve seen tremendous engagement. And we’ve seen an equally enthusiastic response for our new YouTube Kids app, designed to give families a simpler and safer video-viewing experience— it’s already crossed 2 million installations in less than one month.

We’re excited to build on this momentum by taking another big step in favor of choice: offering fans an ads-free version of YouTube for a monthly fee. By creating a new paid offering, we’ll generate a new source of revenue that will supplement your fast growing advertising revenue.

Here’s the portion of the email that describes how subscription revenue will be divided exactly, for those interested:

Subscription Revenues. YouTube will pay you 55% of the total net revenues recognized by YouTube from subscription fees that are attributable to the monthly views or watchtime of your Content as a percentage of the monthly views or watchtime of all or a subset of participating content in the relevant subscription offering (as determined by YouTube). If your Content is included in and viewed by a user in multiple subscription offerings, YouTube will pay you based on the subscription offering with the highest amount of net revenues recognized by YouTube, as calculated by YouTube.

Bottom-line, the Youtube ad-free option wouldn’t get in the way of revenue generation for your favorite channels, so you could sign up to remove ads while still knowing that you are supporting content creators. Aside from the removal of ads, what else can we expect from this subscription option? It’s hard to say for sure. The wording of the email that Youtube sent suggests that this is a separate option from Music Key, but it’s possible this could still be bundled into that service.

The email makes it pretty clear this ad-free subscription option is rolling out sooner rather than later, so it shouldn’t be too long before more details hit. Would you be willing to pay a subscription fee to ditch the ads on Youtube? If so, how much would you pay?