If they really make it possible to view youtube ad free, it will be huge. At least for me. The advertisement based internet drives me crazy, on a philisophical and practical level. I would sign up for a subscription immediately.
Why not take the matter in your own hands, embrace your freedom and install some ad-blocking addon? Or use a tool like youtube-dl, mpv or VLC to simply watch Youtube (and other hosts) videos outside your browser.
Oh really? How about every other site on the net you visit? nytimes? buzzfeed? facebook? other-random-content-site? You're telling me you'd rather pay for each and every site you visit? If not, tell me how else they can make money without ads?
Maybe the ad syndicates should have a central subscription model: you subscribe once with the advertizing syndicate, and then you don't see any ads on any of the affiliated websites which display that agency's ads.
It doesn't make sense to pay off each individual site, when the ad content they display is from centralized sources.
The sites could get a portion of that subscription revenue, by reporting the users who visit their sites who are ad-free subscribers. (Otherwise the ad-free subscribers get to use the individual sites without generating any ad revenue for those sites, while all the subscription revenue goes only to the ad agency). Sites whose content inspires their users to pay not to see ads should be rewarded for that.
Ya, really. Of all the sites I visit and get valuable content from, most of them I pay for. The only outstanding ones I can think of are google search, gmail, and HN. Facebook? NYT? Buzzfeed? Not really in my interest areas.
I'd also waste a lot less time on random stuff if I had to pay for it, so I'd be more productive and make more money!
But that goes against the very grain of a free and open internet, where anyone of any income level can access information. When you start creating paywalls, you start creating scarcity of information to justify people to pay those fees.
I find the whole "internet ads are bad" argument silly and specious at best - I don't care that Amazon shows me pictures of wallets I might want to buy if that means a poor kid in Eastern Europe can read CNN or BBC news for free.
I also don't care if they show me pictures of wallets I like over wallets I don't like.
I do care when any third party knows where I've been, what I am interested in, and otherwise monitors my activity.
Like everything, it's a tradeoff. However, I acknowledge my primary concern is myself -- if not tracking me costs other people a slight chance at an opportunity, I'm must conclude to not include that in my calculus. (In fact, it would be to my advantage if I believed it were a zero sum situation.)
