Why it’s time to stop the fight

I watch YouTube every single day, but I don’t like sitting through advertisements before and during my videos. Because of this, I pay $14/month for YouTube Premium to remove those ads and get on with my day — as do millions of other YouTube Premium subscribers.

However, some people use a different approach: ad blockers. Using ad blockers to bypass YouTube ads is not a new practice, and each year, YouTube becomes more aggressive in cracking down on such behavior. With each new measure it introduces, YouTube makes ad-blocking a less and less attractive option.

No one likes ads, and no one likes paying for another subscription. But as someone who finally subscribed to YouTube Premium about a year ago, I’m here to tell you that if you’re still determined to fight Premium with ad blockers, you’re doing it wrong.

No one likes ads. I don’t like ads, you don’t like ads, and I imagine 99.99% of people reading this don’t like ads. The 0.01% of people who say they do are lying.

This is especially true, if not more so, for ads on YouTube. Having to sit through 30 seconds of advertisements before your video starts — and often additional ads throughout the video — is a frustrating user experience. And yet, it’s an experience that’s also completely necessary.

No matter which YouTube creators/channels you watch, the reason they’re able to keep creating new videos is because of that very advertising we all hate. We might despise sitting through ads while watching videos, but without them, we wouldn’t have those creators in the first place. It’s the same story for online advertising for your favorite social media app, recipe website, or tech blog (including Android Authority). Like it or not, ads pay the bills.

Most of us likely know this already, but it’s a good reminder and baseline to establish. Because while ad blockers make your life easier, they don’t just hurt YouTube — they also hurt the creators you watch. While I couldn’t care less if a multi-billion-dollar company loses a few dollars here and there, I do care about ensuring the creators I watch get their fair share of money from me watching their content. But if I watch YouTube with an ad-blocker, they don’t.

Although I’ve personally avoided ad blockers for this reason, I have tried other, more ethical solutions to manage YouTube ads over the years. After starting a video, I’d knock out a quick chore or handle something for work until the pre-roll ads finished. If a video had additional ads throughout its runtime, I’d use that time to doom-scroll on my phone, grab a snack, etc.

For a while, this method worked. It wasn’t perfect, but I was still watching all the YouTube videos I wanted without paying a dime — even if it meant my viewing experience wasn’t 100% ideal.

After years of not paying for YouTube Premium, I signed up for a YouTube Premium Lite subscription last April to test the waters. A few months later, I went all-in with a fully-fledged YouTube Premium plan. In the 10 months since, I have not once considered canceling my Premium subscription. Why? Because the product you get with YouTube Premium is that good.

Naturally, much of this comes down to YouTube Premium’s hallmark feature: ad-free videos. When you open a video, you get it and nothing else — no ads before the video, during, or after. It’s an unquestionably better user experience compared to the ad-supported model, and you have the peace of mind that the channels you watch aren’t being ripped off  — something that will never be possible with an ad blocker.

But it’s not just ad-free videos that have kept me paying month after month. While that’s the main draw (and why I initially started with Premium Lite), everything else you get with YouTube Premium is equally worth the monthly fee.

I don’t use background playback all the time, but every time I do, I’m happy to have it. The Jump Ahead feature makes it so easy to skip through sponsored segments in videos. Continue Watching is great for picking up where you left off on a video you didn’t finish, and video downloads are essential when I’m traveling for work.

To get all of this — and an included YouTube Music Premium subscription — for just $14/month is about as good a value as you’ll find in the modern streaming landscape. And if none of those extras matter to you, YouTube Premium Lite for $8/month remains an excellent deal if all you care about is removing ads and nothing else.

Keep in mind, I say all of this as someone who’s actively in the process of canceling numerous streaming subscriptions. I can’t justify paying $18/month for Netflix or $17/month for Peacock when I use them maybe once a month, but $14/month for YouTube Premium — which dramatically improves my daily YouTube watching — is money well-spent.

To be clear, I’m not suggesting that everyone needs to subscribe to YouTube Premium. Maybe you’d like to subscribe, but it’s not in your budget. Perhaps you don’t use YouTube enough to justify the monthly fee. Or maybe you truly don’t mind watching ads in between videos. Whatever the case may be, there are plenty of valid reasons not to have YouTube Premium.

However, if the ads annoy you to the point where you’re looking for loophole after loophole to keep watching YouTube with ad blockers, I think it’s time to admit defeat and pay up.

Google may never fully disable ad blockers on YouTube, but the experience of using them is only getting worse and will continue to hurt creators. Meanwhile, YouTube Premium is getting better — whether that’s through new features or more flexible plans like Premium Lite.

We’d be having a very different conversation if YouTube Premium were a bad product, but when it’s (somewhat miraculously) as good as it is, being so resistant to subscribing just doesn’t make sense. I’ve enjoyed my time with Premium since giving in last year, and if you haven’t made the jump already, I really think you will, too.