YouTube to Offer TV Shows and Movies for Free With Ads
- YouTube now offers full episodes and seasons from hundreds of TV shows for free supported by ads for viewers in the US.
- Around 4,000 episodes of shows over 1,500 movies are available at the moment.
- The media giant says it will include up to 100 new titles each week besides the ones already available.
You can now watch full seasons of TV shows for free on YouTube, accompanied by commercials. The media giant announced that it would let users in the United States stream hundreds of shows free of cost while running ads, totaling around 4,000 episodes and over 1,500 movies, with several titles being available in 1080p HD with 5.1 surround sound audio on supported devices. The company also released a new streamlined navigation interface and banner art.
This move will compete with broadcast television and rivals who provide free streaming entertainment, like IMDb TV, Tubi, and Pluto TV. The video streamer is the second-most visited site on the internet, after its parent company, Google. According to Nielsen, YouTube reached more than 135 million people on connected TVs in the US in December 2021. "YouTube is at the forefront of the consumer shift to CTV viewership as the top ad-supported streaming platform with the content people enjoy and the creators they love," the company said.
Among the TV shows are Hell's Kitchen, Andromeda, and Heartland, and you can find movies from Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution, Warner Bros., Paramount Pictures, Lionsgate, and more, such as Gone in Sixty Seconds, Runaway Bride, and Legally Blonde. YouTube did not reveal information about expanding to other countries anytime soon.
In 2020, the company reported bringing in almost $20 billion in advertising revenues globally, which amounted to approximately 14% of the global spend on television advertising. The platform's highest-paid content creators are said to make several million each.
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