Google is – it seems a little desperate – to find a way to push YouTube users toward an expensive payment model.
For most people, YouTube is simply a free service where mostly amateur videos or special interest content has long been available to consume for free. Still, it seems increasingly to be a thorn in Google’s side that its video service is not attracting paying subscribers. It has therefore been experimenting for some time to make free viewing as unattractive as possible. Injecting more and more advertising is one method, but for now it seems to be having little success in getting people to pay as much as €11.99 a month to get rid of commercials. Not entirely surprising, since we are not talking about professional cinema films of name and fame, but a collection of clips that have been blatantly marketed as free from the start.
watch 4K? Pay up!
So Google is further experimenting to discourage free viewing. Such experiments are being unleashed on small groups of random users of the video service. Thus, you may suddenly find yourself up against 15 mandatory commercials before you get to see your video. Of recent date is a message that some visitors see when they want to watch 4K content. This requires a detour past the box office. Will that help? We doubt it, especially considering that people are turning their backs on streaming services more and more. YouTube is seen as an advertising platform anyway, with many manufacturer-sponsored influencers. Why pay for advertising…?