YouTube is in the early stages of exploring new subscription services, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki told Re/code’s Peter Kafka and Liz Gannes at Code/Mobile conference.
“YouTube right now is ad-supported, which is great because it has enabled us to scale to a billion users; but there’s going to be a point where people don’t want to see the ads,” Wojcicki said in an onstage interview. Consumers generally “will either choose ads, or pay a fee, which is an interesting model. … We’re thinking about how to give users options.”
In 2013, YouTube let individual content owners sell subscriptions to their stuff, but it has done little to promote that option since then. Wojcicki said she was interested in pursuing other subscription models as well.
Wojcicki discussed a variety of topics during the interview, including YouTube’s relationship with parent company Google, YouTube’s efforts to keep its content creators happy and how YouTube is adapting to its growing mobile-user base.
When asked how being a part of Google benefits YouTube, Wojcicki joked, “We get free food. They changed it all to healthy snacks.”
“Really, having the ad sales has been one benefit,” she said. “I think it’s important to point out that when YouTube was acquired by Google, it was still a pretty nascent business, and most of the people were hobbyists. … So I think what we’ve gotten is a long-term consistent investment. As well as free food.”
