Survey says watching YouTube ads trumps paying for Premium, at least according to some readers

Jul 29, 2026 — 6:00 AM ET

I recently detailed my battle with ads on my parents’ phones, so needless to say, I’m not particularly fond of the scammy pop-ups that corrupt my and their YouTube experience. Thankfully, there are plenty of ways to address this issue.

Recently, the DuckDuckGo Browser rolled out its own solution — a dedicated YouTube Ad-Blocking feature that my colleague Shimul used to great effect on her device. But what is your preferred way to deal with ads on YouTube?

How do readers deal with YouTube ads?

We asked readers this question in a recent poll, and the results paint a picture that Google likely won’t appreciate.

This survey garnered over 4,000 votes, and I’m surprised by how many of our readers subscribe to YouTube Premium to get rid of ads. This portion amounts to 29.5% of the vote, or just under 3 in 10 respondents.

Paying for YouTube Premium comes with perks beyond ad-blocking, though, including smarter viewing continuity features across devices, bundled YouTube Music, and background play support.

However, despite Premium’s popularity, it isn’t our readers’ preferred option for dealing with YouTube ads.

More readers have ditched YouTube entirely or deal with its numerous ads than pay for Premium.

Unsurprisingly, the most popular option is using a dedicated ad-blocking solution — many of which are free. Some of these solutions include Blokada, NextDNS, a browser solution like Brave or DuckDuckGo, browser extensions for Firefox, or an alternative YouTube app.

Notably, some of these solutions work beyond YouTube, which makes them far more impactful on devices than YouTube Premium alone. This could be one reason readers tend to reach for dedicated ad blockers.

The result that surprised me is just how many readers grin and bear YouTube ads rather than pay for YouTube Premium or use an ad-blocker.

More than 1 in every 5 readers (21.9%) just “put up with” YouTube’s ads, while 10.8% of respondents completely stopped using YouTube altogether to skirt its ads. That seems a rather extreme solution, given the multiple solutions available.

How do you deal with YouTube’s ads? Do you believe that the video platform has a problem with advertising? Let us know in the comments below.