An indispensable platform for modern people’s entertainment life is YouTube. Usually when considering whether to become a YouTube Premium subscriber, you may focus more on what additional upgrade features you can get. But if you are already a frequent user of YouTube, you may want to know more about what the monthly payment has done for you, especially how much time it has saved you from watching ads.
How much time can YouTube Premium save you by being ad-free?
What are the benefits of YouTube Premium?
There are many advantages to upgrading from YouTube Free Tier to YouTube Premium subscribers. Here I will briefly list them:
- Watch videos without ads
Content creators can still embed branding and promotional ads within the actual video, but you won’t see ads served by YouTube. - Watch offline
You can download the video first so you can watch it where you don’t have an Internet connection. - continue watching
On your web browser and mobile device, YouTube tracks where you end up in a video so you can continue watching it later. - Picture-in-picture (PiP)
In YouTube for mobile, you can use picture-in-picture to watch videos while using other apps on your mobile device. - background play
You can minimize the mobile version and let the audio continue playing in the background without leaving the app open. - Playback controls
You can adjust the playback speed and easily swipe forward or backward through the video. - YouTube Music Premium
This service is also included with a YouTube Premium subscription, allowing you to listen to music on the go.
The most relevant thing to discuss today is also one of the main reasons why anyone subscribes to YouTube Premium: no ads.
How much time do YouTube ads take up?
Ads are never fun, and when you’re a YouTuber who watches videos every day and doesn’t have a YouTube Premium subscription, the number of ads can quickly become annoying. Although most ads can be skipped, you must pay attention to whether the playback window enters the ad segment anytime and anywhere, and wait 5 seconds before clicking skip. If you’re not watching it, you’re probably going to be watching a 15 to 30 second commercial.
On top of that, YouTube’s advertising structure and policies are constantly changing. Tracking how much time these ads take up is trickier than tracking ads on traditional TV or even streaming services, which have more standardized viewing structures. Since ad content depends on what you’re watching and how often you jump to new videos, the only way to estimate how much time YouTube ads take up is to point-and-shoot them under real-world conditions.
Try watching videos of various lengths without signing in to a YouTube Premium account, and you’ll learn two things from the experience. First, the shorter the video you watch, the more often ads will appear. Second, even as the number of videos increases, regardless of length, the differences in ad time are not as extreme as you might think. In an ideal world where you’re aggressive and careful about clicking the ad skip button each time, you’ll see about 90 seconds of ad content per hour if you watch a lot of short-length movies; if you watch longer movies, long ads of about 35 seconds are common. For viewers who are highly focused on skipping ads, you end up seeing much less ad time than if you were watching ad-laden streaming (about 4 minutes per hour) or broadcast or cable TV. Likewise, if you don’t hit every skip, you can watch several minutes of ads play in the same time slot.
You can open the YoTube app, click on your profile picture, and view your average YouTube usage from “Watched Time”, or evaluate how long you have watched based on your regular viewing habits. For example, assuming you watch YouTube content for 2 hours a day, it’s a reasonable estimate that you’ll see at least 90 minutes of ads out of the 60 total hours you watch per month.
Is it worth upgrading to YouTube Premium?
The value of time in everyone’s mind is different, but we can simply convert it using the minimum hourly wage (but it may or may not be higher). The current YouTube Premium subscription price is 179 yuan per month. If calculated based on Taiwan’s Ministry of Labor’s current hourly minimum wage of 176 yuan, the 90 minutes you save every month (based on watching two hours a day) is approximately equivalent to a saving of 264 yuan. If you are considering the 269 yuan family plan that can add up to 5 users besides yourself, if fully utilized, it means that each person can save a total of 540 minutes for only 44.83 yuan, and the total time cost is 1,584 yuan saved based on the minimum hourly wage.
For YouTube enthusiasts who watch videos for a long time, they don’t like to be frequently interrupted while watching videos. The frequent, short and irregular advertisements on YouTube are much more annoying than the uniformity of traditional TV advertisements. If you just want to watch videos quietly without being disturbed by any interruptions, YouTube Premium does make sense as a subscription. At least YouTube gives you the choice of exchanging money for time, or exchanging time for money.
Especially if most of the videos you watch tend to be cooking instruction, fitness or DIY videos, the frequent advertisements are even more annoying. Imagine you are doing yoga training, watching a video repairing water pipes, your hands are very busy, or your hands are covered with flour or cooking oil. You have to reach out at any time to skip the advertisement, otherwise you will be stuck in the moment and wait for it to finish playing before entering the next stage. That will be very anxiety-provoking.
Source: KOCPC Chinese