Google is exploring the possibility of introducing a paid, ad-free version of YouTube.
Speaking at the Code/Mobile technology conference in California and quoted by Reuters, Susan Wojcicki, a Google senior VP who heads the YouTube business, said: “There are going to be cases where people are going to say ‘I don’t want to see the ads or I want to have a different kind of experience’”.
She added that such a paid video service was “near term”.
“We’re early in that process. But if you look at media over time, most of them have both ads and subscription.”
Reuters notes that YouTube launched a pilot in May last year that allowed individual content creators to charge consumers a subscription fee to access a particular “channel” of videos.
