More YouTube Ads Coming In An Effort To Get Users To Pay Up

YouTube is about to employ a rather unique strategy in order to get more people to buy into its upcoming subscription plan. The service is going to begin to insert more ads in videos in an effort to frustrate users enough that they’ll want to pay to eliminate them. YouTube’s global head of music Lyor Cohen laid out the strategy recently in his keynote address at SXSW and in an interview with Bloomberg.

Making users frustrated with your service might be a risky proposition since users may flee to another service instead, but Cohen is convinced that the plan is necessary in order to convert at least some of its 1.5 billion free monthly users to subscribers.

Plus, it’s not every single YouTube user that will see an increased number of ads. In fact, only the ones that watch the most music videos will be targeted, since they’re the ones that could ultimately see the most benefit a paid subscription.

YouTube’s new service hasn’t been officially named yet, nor have any details about it been announced. That said, there are multiple reports that it will be launching sooner rather than later, which is why YouTube is ramping up its aggressive “frustration strategy.” YouTube has tried to sell a paid service in the past with its YouTube Red, but it didn’t seem to go well as user numbers were said to be so small that they were never announced or even leaked.

This actually seems like the wrong time to launch a new service, as we’ll soon see a much more aggressive Spotify once it’s listed on the New York Stock Exchange next week. With Facebook also pushing heavily into music thanks to new licensing deals with the major labels, there’s going to be plenty of competition, so having annoyed or dissatisfied users on any service just seems like the wrong way to go.