YouTube’s Premium Lite tier arrives, providing cheaper access to ad-free viewing

YouTube’s Premium Lite tier is here, and cost-conscious viewers who dislike watching ads should give it a look. The new subscription option is cheaper than pre-existing YouTube Premium plans, but lacks access to some paywalled features.

Premium Lite is YouTube’s olive branch to AdBlock users

The platform has made it harder for users to install third-party extensions that remove ads from the YouTube player. That move has frustrated users who are fatigued by the volume and duration of ad breaks on YouTube.

As YouTube has limited access to ad blockers, it has also made Premium more expensive through routine price hikes. Perhaps some users would embrace a YouTube-approved method for removing ads as long as it came at a fair price; those YouTube users will be most intrigued by Premium Lite, which costs $7.99 per month.

For comparison, the full-featured version of YouTube Premium currently goes for $13.99 per month. Subscribers who accept the discount will have to live without YouTube Music and offline downloads, but the biggest perk of Premium — freedom from ads — is available at every price point.

“Today we’ll begin expanding our Premium Lite pilot to users in the US,” reads a YouTube blog post. “In the coming weeks, we’ll also make Premium Lite available to all users in our current pilot countries – Thailand, Germany, and Australia.”

Premium Lite adds a new wrinkle to a service with 125 million subscribers

YouTube shared some stats about its Premium tier alongside the official announcement of its new subscription option. 125 million accounts are now subscribed to YouTube Music and YouTube Premium around the globe.

On the TV screen front, YouTube continues to dominate. After previously becoming the first streaming hub to account for at least 10% of all TV watch time, YouTube has endured as the #1 platform in Nielsen’s latest ranking of TV hubs.

With YouTube increasing its market saturation, new revenue streams are key

Everyone knows about YouTube these days. That’s good news for the platform’s cultural legacy, but it does raise some financial questions: How does a video site with so much saturation continue to grow?

YouTube’s strategy seems to involve the optimization of its revenue streams. Its plan to redesign its TV app to bring more attention to its Primetime Channels hub will boost a marketplace many viewers don’t know about. Premium Lite gives YouTube a chance to promote one of its longest-running revenue streams while potentially introducing it to a fresh wave of thrifty customers.