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YouTube to display more ads for Premium Lite subscribers

YouTube Premium Lite subscribers are receiving emails from Google informing them about a change. The streaming service will increase the ads that members see on the platform.

In March 2025, Google announced that it was resurrecting YouTube Premium Lite, after killing the cheaper plan in 2023. The new plan was initially available in select countries: United States, Australia, Thailand & Germany. Google expanded YouTube Premium Lite to the following regions in April 2025: Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Canada and Great Britain.

YouTube Premium Lite costs $7.99/month in the U.S., €5.99 per month in Europe. It lacks a few options that the Premium tier boasts, including the ability to download videos for offline playback, play videos in the background, ad-free music and music videos. The only real feature that subscribers get is fewer ads in certain videos. But now things are changing.

YouTube Premium Lite Launches in the US for $7.99 a Month

A user who goes by the name big_D shared the contents of the mail received from YouTube, here's what it said, "We are writing to let you know that beginning 30 June 2025, ads may appear on Shorts, in addition to music content and when you search or browse. Most videos will continue to remain ad-free." The user explained that the frequency at which YouTube displayed ads was becoming unbearable, and that it once displayed 8 ad breaks of 90 minutes each in a 12-minute video. This led to the user opting to subscribe for YouTube Premium Lite, in the hope it would not show many ads.

German blog, Deskmodder.de, has shared a screenshot of a similar email from Google, which confirms the news. It appears that YouTube Premium Lite is neither light on the wallet, nor in terms of an ad-free-experience, it is being bloated with more ads. Is this an attempt to push subscribers towards the more expensive YouTube Premium plan?

Last month, Google changed the interface of YouTube TV which puts Shorts front and center, prioritizing short videos in the feed, ahead of channels that users were subscribed to. A few days later, YouTube introduced a Peak Points AI algorithm that displays ads during key moments in a video. YouTube's aggressive approach on advertising, and promoting shorts has drawn criticism from many users. But the company doesn't seem to care about the negative feedback, and only continues to pile on the ads in its goals to maximize its revenue from advertisements.

Source: Neowin

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