YouTube lifts Premium price and ad push

YouTube just made the trade-off sharper in the United States: pay more to avoid ads, or watch a service that is starting to look more like television on the biggest screen in the house. New U.S. YouTube Premium signups now show $15.99 a month for the individual plan, up from $13.99. (9to5google.com) The increase is not just on one tier. 9to5Google reported the family plan rising from $22.99 to $26.99, the annual plan from $139.99 to $159.99, and Premium Lite from $7.99 to $8.99. (9to5google.com) Google’s own help pages do not pin one public U.S. price to every user, but they do say YouTube will email members at least 30 days before a country-level price increase and that recurring prices can be checked in the account’s Purchases and Memberships page. (support.google.com) At almost the same moment, reports started piling up from television viewers who said YouTube was serving ad breaks as long as 90 seconds on smart televisions and connected television devices. Search Engine Land said the sightings pointed to a test of longer unskippable inventory on TV screens. (searchengineland.com) That number stood out because Google had already spent the last few years building a more television-like ad system for YouTube on living-room screens. In 2023, Google said it was bringing connected television-first formats including 30-second non-skippable ads and “Pause” ad experiences to YouTube. (blog.google) Those “Pause” ads are exactly what they sound like: a brand message that appears when a viewer stops a video instead of interrupting it mid-stream. Google’s ads help pages pitch them as a connected television format designed to reach viewers on TV devices with a call to action. (support.google.com) Google has also been adding shopping tools to those television ads. In January 2026, Google said its Demand Gen system powers “Shoppable CTV,” which lets viewers browse and buy products while watching YouTube ads on the big screen. (blog.google) So the picture is not just “more ads.” It is YouTube trying to turn television viewing into premium ad real estate, where a brand can buy a 30-second spot, a pause screen, or a shopping prompt the way it used to buy a prime-time television slot. (blog.google) That strategy makes sense because YouTube is no longer mainly a phone app in advertisers’ eyes. Nielsen’s Gauge tracks YouTube as one of the biggest forces in U.S. television viewing, which is why the company keeps building products specifically for TV screens instead of treating them like an afterthought. (nielsen.com) There is one wrinkle: after the reports spread, other outlets said YouTube denied that 90-second unskippable television ads were an intentional format test. That leaves open the possibility of a limited experiment, a delivery error, or a rollout that was seen before Google wanted to describe it publicly. (androidauthority.com) For viewers, the new math is simple. If the free version on a television starts feeling more like old-school commercial TV, then $15.99 is the price YouTube is putting on uninterrupted viewing; if enough people refuse, YouTube still gets a bigger ad break to sell to brands. (9to5google.com) (searchengineland.com)