I’ve said this a few times in various places, but I’m really surprised we aren’t allowed to bid for ad space for ourselves to not show an ad the way advertisers do for ads. Obviously a flat monthly rate is simpler, nobody is denying that, but just from a purely “free market” perspective (which shareholders love to say they want while using the government to crush opposition) why can’t I pay slightly more than whatever small amount of money someone is paying to show me an ad to not see the ad? Realistically I don’t think we’ll ever see that because it’s a fairly complicated. I don’t have any hard data, but I can’t imagine that the majority of users using something like YouTube Premium are getting a “good deal.” Sure, some folks probably watch all day every day and they get the better end of the deal, but I’d bet for a lot of folks YouTube makes more money off charging the subscription than they would showing the ads. Which is sort of an odd scenario we’ve gotten ourselves into (but amazing if you’re a company that serves ads).

Its a good idea but mentally people hate micro-transactions(transactions that are lower than 10cents) so they get mad every time its suggested. Plus its technically quite challenging to process those kind of transactions efficiently.