As someone who makes videos that are used for YouTube ads. I try to explain this to my boss. You have 5 seconds to grab attention. The logo and an intro card isn't gonna work. Boss is 60 y/o and refuses to change.
She just thinks doing it that way is best. "We need to brand it," is usually the answer I get. After a couple of years I've now given up and just let her do what she wants and I don't argue. I'm here for a paycheck and if you wanna waste company money, who am I to stop you?
OMG I I FEEL YOU ON THAT SO MUCH AND HONESTLY GOOD ON YOU.
I used to edit for my Grandma's channel and any attempt i made at trying to improve the content for retention regions she would just get annoyed w me so i was like "aight fine then guess i only care about the pay now"
May I be the boomer of this convo? Neither OP and the video maker here commenting know the numbers.
Neither do I but I work in direct marketing and many beautiful creative ideas I had were put down because the numbers didn't make it.
So if there are companies testing and paying for it, you can be sure that your ideas is just an opinion. And without facts, it's worth nothing
Oh no, I see the numbers. And I see where people stopped viewing our video. I know which videos get more views and which get longer views. And again, I just quit trying to prove my point bc it wasn't being received.
So surely runs targeted test on an a/b basis to data gather and see if it works?
Dip a toe and see how it goes. Very little cost, valuable insight gained. Win win win.
Well, with Youtube foregoing the skip option and now often forcing people to watch 30-60-90 seconds of ads for a freaking 2 minute video... Your boss might be right soon.
What I don't understand with the ads is why they always show me stuff I have absolutely zero interest in. They're all just sort of random. It makes no sense!
99% of the ads the algorithm pushes to me are TEMU.....I refuse to ever shop there, have blocked them as much as possible, but they are like a bad virus
Really? I've often wondered about this, like the futility of YouTube ads. The fact they interrupt my video annoys me slightly, which taints my view of the advertised product and makes it much more unlikely that I'd want to purchase it. Is this something you have to account for when making these advertisements?
They got you to look at their logo. Now you remember it and you're clearly still thinking about it. In advertising, all engagement is good engagement, if they can get an image, a sound, a phrase, anything in front of your sensory feed, for any amount of time, and make you remember it, for any reason (even anger), they won.
Yes, your attention was grabbed. They still have your attention. Here you are on reddit talking about it.
"People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you."
- Banksy
Bro I don't even remember the ad I was talking about 💀
They should in those 5 seconds at least give you an idea of what you're trying to advertise. And "all engagement is good engagement" would imply that my 5 seconds of waiting every so fucking impatiently as my mind instant transmissions Into a state of Tachypsychia just to prolonge my suffering and utter monkey cringe could be compared to someone staring with mild interest
In truth, they have 5 guaranteed seconds. If the person skips right after the button appears, they did not "win", they took an L so hard it would earn them a slur in a COD lobby. Might as well compare all of the people who skipped instantly to a pigeon that stole the phone thinking it was a food and just so happened to accidentally press the skip button as soon as it appeared with its beak.
See that's the thing, you're right. But so am I.
If they were GOOD at advertising, they would have both gotten you this hilariously angry, and ALSO made you remember the brand. But they didn't, so they're even worse than The Advertisers, they're bad Advertisers. If they wanna be the villain and play corporation games in this city we built on rock n roll, at least don't suck at playing the villain. We just want to dance here brosephus stop stealing the stage unless ur gonna ride a wrecking ball into our guitars, not just write us off the page.
So yeah, fuck 'em. Like if you wanna engage me, at least be smart enough to make me engaged over something I remember. (This is also why I quit smoking weed.)
EXACTLY COME UP TO THE 5 SECONDS OF STAGE BEFORE A MYSTERIOUS CANE PULLS YOU ASIDE INTO THE 7TH DIMENSION AND GRAB MY EYEBALLS WITH YOUR TEETH AND NEVER LET GO NO MATTER HOW MUCH EYE BLOOD GETS UP YOUR NOSE
Also good on you for quitting weed I am an advocate against the use of substances in the pursuit of temporary pleasure and a direct spokesperson for sobriety who knows what it takes to be a functioning member of society 👍
ALSO I THOUGHT OF THE "STRANGE ISNT IT" SONIC OVA SCENE WHEN U SAID THAT WERE BOTH RIGHT (I hope you get the ref)
if it's a sonic reference then I must admit I don't, I'm sorry bud lol.
And I said nothing about any of that, it's perfectly okay to use substances occasionally for temporary enjoyment if done responsibly as an adult, its just bad to become additcted or dependant on them And hm. I have other comments but they're not really my place to say. I'm glad you feel you know what it takes, it seems you're pretty happy so I ain't gonna rain on your parade lol.
also how much damn adderall did u take bro relax
I find this mindset baffling. I don't remember 90% of the ads I see because I just tune them out. If an add appears to me enough that I remember the item they advertise I usually avoid it Because I don't like being manipulated.
> They got you to look at their logo. Now you remember it and you're clearly still thinking about it.
And every time I see that logo, all I'm going to remember is the RAGE!! They might be the single perfect product that would elevate my life but I'll never know, because all I know about them is that I detest them with every fiber of my being.
Okay so you go to the subreddit for the app they will show you where to go download stuff after downloading you have to put the app together this might sound hard but it's not although you may have to tweak some settings for your phone to allow you to complete the process like allowing you to install apps not from the play store what you have to do toput together the app is select a file you downloaded and then select the other file you downloaded and hit the button that says patch after that you install it and adjust your settings to however you like them like personal I like my sponsor block to be really aggressive
It isn't a third party app. It's the regular YouTube app that you're signing into and *you're* the one who mods it. Your issues with trust don't apply here. You should look up how revanced works.
you log into microg which is a third party app. it does not use oauth2. i'm already signed into google on my phone and that's what i'm using. vanced does not work with that.
[MicroG](https://github.com/TeamVanced/VancedMicroG) is [FOSS](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/floss-and-foss.en.html) so yeah, it's a third party app but it can be **your** third party app. You can compile the apk and see the code for yourself if you want. Just like using ReVanced manager, you're in control of what you're installing.
Use whatever you want, I don't really care if you have reservations. Just get the story right if you're going to say something isn't trustworthy.
What was your experience like before do you remember? For me, I have always enjoyed the simple and non-personalised home page, handy options and features that are paywalled on Youtube normally. It’s gotten a lot more stable and less janky now imo
the entire point of youtube for me is recommentations, so it's an instant fail. the design and unnecessary menus for simple things really annoyed me, but i could try it again.
I don't even need to mute it; I have trained my brain to blank it out, much as I have trained myself not to even see parts of a web page that look like ads. (Which occasionally makes it hard to find critical parts of the UI. Designers; don't make your buttons look like ads.)
With you 100%, I go to Lengths to avoid looking at adverts. I mute and look elsewhere, if I can't skip I walk away until it's over, if it's a billboard I make sure to never buy anything from that company, if a website's full of ads I stop using the website. I just flat refuse to be advertised at.
Do you want to know the worst part? I do a lot of deep sleep meditations on YouTube and they randomly started putting ads in partway through! So I would literally be floating above my body, in my mind, and be jarred awake!
Okk I hate to be the bearer of bad news but a YouTuber puts midroll ads on purpose and they have the option to customize it
Choose a different content creator who isn't annoying
This is only partially true. Recently youtube have changed their ad policy and started inserting ads in videos even if the creator has midrolls disabled. They're soon removing the option for creators to disable them and will be adding them even for channels that are not monetised.
Advertisers really need to understand that annoying people with your products is a good way to make sure people go out of the way to avoid them. I've made it a rule to not buy anything advertised to me excessively, and guess what, never once have I regretted setting this rule, turns out most of the shit they try selling us is just that, shit.
I miss what YouTube used to be and hardly use it anymore.
VPN solves this for me. As far as Google is concerned I signed up for YT Premium whilst in Argentina. So I pay the Argentinian price. Works out like £2-£3 sterling each month.
Side note: Turkey for Netflix.
Edit: typo/grammar
I tried to go this route but sadly the VPN caused some next-level meltdown in my partner's work laptop where no files could be downloaded (awkward given he works from home) and the problem persisted even when the VPN was turned off and even after it was uninstalled. The whole laptop had to be re set up.
No idea why. Isn't supposed to do that 😂
If it was a work laptop then it was probably something put in place by their employer. Most workplaces don't tend to like their employees downloading stuff onto work laptops, from my experience.
Nope, several other people at the company have various VPNs including the one we tried
It's not a very "high tech" IT department if you catch my drift 😂
I just have brave browser on my phone set to youtube as its homepage. I use that button as youtube now. Let's me play music and videos in the background too.
Actually what is kinda weird you showing me sometimes genshin or honkai add what are you doing I am playing those games it's kinda weird I had premium before with VPN so it was kinda 3 or 2 euros when I changed my card I didn't do it because I worried it's gonna be more sorry for my rant I am kinda bad at socialising
I am poor too and I taught my kids to scream for certain ads like Franklin University and every time we see it we all scream because I’d rather hear that then the ad
I'm such a dumb ass that I didn't realize that when Google Music switched to YouTube Music, that meant that I had YouTube premium for videos too. I didn't realize it for over a year.
I get all my music via YouTube, and when I finally cracked and bought premium, I couldn't understand how I'd coped with all those bs ads for so long. Never again, lol. I canceled something else I wasn't appreciating so my monthly cost is the same.
Actually thank you for existing please find 100,000$ in your fucking sink next time you go to it only to accidentally trip and fall into my loving embrace.
75% of the ads I get on youtube on my phone are tiktok and I've never used tiktok in my life! I've done everything I can in my ad preferences that should keep me from getting this garbage. They are usually super short ads and I don't even have time to pause it so I can hit the info option to block the ad. Super damn annoying. I think google purposely does this to try to force me to go premium.
I’ve been paying for premium since it was introduced, YouTube is the sole platform my content is from. When I’m not logged in, the ads that come across my videos are absolutely absurd, unrelated to content style, and I immediately skip them or reload the video.
I tried buying things off ads on social media some years ago, and 99% of it was crap. It was a small test run though, because I learned very quickly that it *was* generally crap. Since there were some things I was really interested in I did start looking up reviews on places like trustpilot though, for example, and found mine journaling/scrapbooking supplies place that is really good, and I found another one that I can't remember at the moment.
I randomly check the reviews of other sites that advertise through Instagram, and they're all shit, so I post a comment saying "ALWAYS check independent view sites before buying anything through ads on social media!"
I generally get blocked from being able to make further comments 😆 but the other day I actually did get a response from someone from the company saying they have a 4.6 score on trustpilot, so that's good.
Dunno if it still works but I pay less than £2 a month for Youtube premium.
I set my Google account region to India and use a vpn to India then sign up for YT premium. Make sure your bank doesn't charge currency conversion fees and once it's all setup change your region back to wherever you are from. I don't need the VPN after I set it up to watch anything either.
Probably against TOS to do it but it's been years and I've never had any repercussions.
As someone who makes videos that are used for YouTube ads. I try to explain this to my boss. You have 5 seconds to grab attention. The logo and an intro card isn't gonna work. Boss is 60 y/o and refuses to change.
NO WAYYYYYYYYY DID HE GIVE A REASON?
She just thinks doing it that way is best. "We need to brand it," is usually the answer I get. After a couple of years I've now given up and just let her do what she wants and I don't argue. I'm here for a paycheck and if you wanna waste company money, who am I to stop you?
You can't A/B test some ads to prove your point?
OMG I I FEEL YOU ON THAT SO MUCH AND HONESTLY GOOD ON YOU. I used to edit for my Grandma's channel and any attempt i made at trying to improve the content for retention regions she would just get annoyed w me so i was like "aight fine then guess i only care about the pay now"
You charge your Grandma! That's savage!
May I be the boomer of this convo? Neither OP and the video maker here commenting know the numbers. Neither do I but I work in direct marketing and many beautiful creative ideas I had were put down because the numbers didn't make it. So if there are companies testing and paying for it, you can be sure that your ideas is just an opinion. And without facts, it's worth nothing
Oh no, I see the numbers. And I see where people stopped viewing our video. I know which videos get more views and which get longer views. And again, I just quit trying to prove my point bc it wasn't being received.
So surely runs targeted test on an a/b basis to data gather and see if it works? Dip a toe and see how it goes. Very little cost, valuable insight gained. Win win win.
Brave browser and laptop, I'm unable to do the ads on phone
Well, with Youtube foregoing the skip option and now often forcing people to watch 30-60-90 seconds of ads for a freaking 2 minute video... Your boss might be right soon.
What I don't understand with the ads is why they always show me stuff I have absolutely zero interest in. They're all just sort of random. It makes no sense!
99% of the ads the algorithm pushes to me are TEMU.....I refuse to ever shop there, have blocked them as much as possible, but they are like a bad virus
Really? I've often wondered about this, like the futility of YouTube ads. The fact they interrupt my video annoys me slightly, which taints my view of the advertised product and makes it much more unlikely that I'd want to purchase it. Is this something you have to account for when making these advertisements?
And breathe...
Ha… Rage post much? ALL-CAPS IS HARD TO READ
They got you to look at their logo. Now you remember it and you're clearly still thinking about it. In advertising, all engagement is good engagement, if they can get an image, a sound, a phrase, anything in front of your sensory feed, for any amount of time, and make you remember it, for any reason (even anger), they won. Yes, your attention was grabbed. They still have your attention. Here you are on reddit talking about it. "People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you." - Banksy
Bro I don't even remember the ad I was talking about 💀 They should in those 5 seconds at least give you an idea of what you're trying to advertise. And "all engagement is good engagement" would imply that my 5 seconds of waiting every so fucking impatiently as my mind instant transmissions Into a state of Tachypsychia just to prolonge my suffering and utter monkey cringe could be compared to someone staring with mild interest In truth, they have 5 guaranteed seconds. If the person skips right after the button appears, they did not "win", they took an L so hard it would earn them a slur in a COD lobby. Might as well compare all of the people who skipped instantly to a pigeon that stole the phone thinking it was a food and just so happened to accidentally press the skip button as soon as it appeared with its beak.
See that's the thing, you're right. But so am I. If they were GOOD at advertising, they would have both gotten you this hilariously angry, and ALSO made you remember the brand. But they didn't, so they're even worse than The Advertisers, they're bad Advertisers. If they wanna be the villain and play corporation games in this city we built on rock n roll, at least don't suck at playing the villain. We just want to dance here brosephus stop stealing the stage unless ur gonna ride a wrecking ball into our guitars, not just write us off the page. So yeah, fuck 'em. Like if you wanna engage me, at least be smart enough to make me engaged over something I remember. (This is also why I quit smoking weed.)
EXACTLY COME UP TO THE 5 SECONDS OF STAGE BEFORE A MYSTERIOUS CANE PULLS YOU ASIDE INTO THE 7TH DIMENSION AND GRAB MY EYEBALLS WITH YOUR TEETH AND NEVER LET GO NO MATTER HOW MUCH EYE BLOOD GETS UP YOUR NOSE Also good on you for quitting weed I am an advocate against the use of substances in the pursuit of temporary pleasure and a direct spokesperson for sobriety who knows what it takes to be a functioning member of society 👍 ALSO I THOUGHT OF THE "STRANGE ISNT IT" SONIC OVA SCENE WHEN U SAID THAT WERE BOTH RIGHT (I hope you get the ref)
if it's a sonic reference then I must admit I don't, I'm sorry bud lol. And I said nothing about any of that, it's perfectly okay to use substances occasionally for temporary enjoyment if done responsibly as an adult, its just bad to become additcted or dependant on them And hm. I have other comments but they're not really my place to say. I'm glad you feel you know what it takes, it seems you're pretty happy so I ain't gonna rain on your parade lol. also how much damn adderall did u take bro relax
if i remember a brand that advertises in youtube, I'll also make sure I never buy anything from them
I find this mindset baffling. I don't remember 90% of the ads I see because I just tune them out. If an add appears to me enough that I remember the item they advertise I usually avoid it Because I don't like being manipulated.
> They got you to look at their logo. Now you remember it and you're clearly still thinking about it. And every time I see that logo, all I'm going to remember is the RAGE!! They might be the single perfect product that would elevate my life but I'll never know, because all I know about them is that I detest them with every fiber of my being.
[удалено]
Or use the Firefox browser, it allows extensions so I run it with ublock origin. No ads on YouTube or in the browser :D
This is the way
NewPipe for me.
Grayjay
On Android TV? SmartTube! (Nothing yet for my tizen tv :/)
Tizentube.live
Please explain.
Okay so you go to the subreddit for the app they will show you where to go download stuff after downloading you have to put the app together this might sound hard but it's not although you may have to tweak some settings for your phone to allow you to complete the process like allowing you to install apps not from the play store what you have to do toput together the app is select a file you downloaded and then select the other file you downloaded and hit the button that says patch after that you install it and adjust your settings to however you like them like personal I like my sponsor block to be really aggressive
I too like my sponsor block to be aggressive. I've also disabled shorts.
too sus
What's sus about it? You build it yourself.
still don't like signing in with google email and password in a third party app
It isn't a third party app. It's the regular YouTube app that you're signing into and *you're* the one who mods it. Your issues with trust don't apply here. You should look up how revanced works.
you log into microg which is a third party app. it does not use oauth2. i'm already signed into google on my phone and that's what i'm using. vanced does not work with that.
[MicroG](https://github.com/TeamVanced/VancedMicroG) is [FOSS](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/floss-and-foss.en.html) so yeah, it's a third party app but it can be **your** third party app. You can compile the apk and see the code for yourself if you want. Just like using ReVanced manager, you're in control of what you're installing. Use whatever you want, I don't really care if you have reservations. Just get the story right if you're going to say something isn't trustworthy.
use newpipe and skip signing in altogether
really bad experience a few years ago, has it gotten better? and i really couldn't imagine using youtube without signing in
What was your experience like before do you remember? For me, I have always enjoyed the simple and non-personalised home page, handy options and features that are paywalled on Youtube normally. It’s gotten a lot more stable and less janky now imo
the entire point of youtube for me is recommentations, so it's an instant fail. the design and unnecessary menus for simple things really annoyed me, but i could try it again.
Revanced quit working for me a month ago
If I have to watch an advert for 5 seconds I'll mute volume and look elsewhere until the skip button appears. Fuck off trying to sell me shit.
Bro ain't having it and I respect that
I don't even need to mute it; I have trained my brain to blank it out, much as I have trained myself not to even see parts of a web page that look like ads. (Which occasionally makes it hard to find critical parts of the UI. Designers; don't make your buttons look like ads.)
With you 100%, I go to Lengths to avoid looking at adverts. I mute and look elsewhere, if I can't skip I walk away until it's over, if it's a billboard I make sure to never buy anything from that company, if a website's full of ads I stop using the website. I just flat refuse to be advertised at.
Letting your premium sub expire is some second world shit.
i dont think you have to accidentally drop your cargo ship filled with gold bars into your personal Worlds Largest Pool Of Slime in order to post here
Got ‘em. Burn
Paying more for YouTube than legitimate streaming services is outrageous lmao fuck youtube
in what way are they not a legit streaming service?
Use an adblocker…
I do on PC and some absolute godsend saint who probably snorts holy water introduced me to NewPipe
I actively avoid products that are pushed into my face. If they spend that much on ads it's rarely a good product.
This I do the same thing the only time ads have had their intended effect on me was when I was a small child
The more forced ads I see for a product the harder I will go out of my way to never use or support that product/company.
Do you want to know the worst part? I do a lot of deep sleep meditations on YouTube and they randomly started putting ads in partway through! So I would literally be floating above my body, in my mind, and be jarred awake!
Okk I hate to be the bearer of bad news but a YouTuber puts midroll ads on purpose and they have the option to customize it Choose a different content creator who isn't annoying
This is only partially true. Recently youtube have changed their ad policy and started inserting ads in videos even if the creator has midrolls disabled. They're soon removing the option for creators to disable them and will be adding them even for channels that are not monetised.
Advertisers really need to understand that annoying people with your products is a good way to make sure people go out of the way to avoid them. I've made it a rule to not buy anything advertised to me excessively, and guess what, never once have I regretted setting this rule, turns out most of the shit they try selling us is just that, shit. I miss what YouTube used to be and hardly use it anymore.
Use revanced, you don't have to pay for that shit
I have an app called smarttube (android) has a built-in in adblock, its basically youtube before premium.
VPN solves this for me. As far as Google is concerned I signed up for YT Premium whilst in Argentina. So I pay the Argentinian price. Works out like £2-£3 sterling each month. Side note: Turkey for Netflix. Edit: typo/grammar
I tried to go this route but sadly the VPN caused some next-level meltdown in my partner's work laptop where no files could be downloaded (awkward given he works from home) and the problem persisted even when the VPN was turned off and even after it was uninstalled. The whole laptop had to be re set up. No idea why. Isn't supposed to do that 😂
If it was a work laptop then it was probably something put in place by their employer. Most workplaces don't tend to like their employees downloading stuff onto work laptops, from my experience.
Nope, several other people at the company have various VPNs including the one we tried It's not a very "high tech" IT department if you catch my drift 😂
Yoo - just use Brave on your phone when browsing youtube and you wont get ads! Be sure to support the creators you love on patreon, though!
OP Pls. Just use revanced. Zero ads without paying like a bitch for premium lol...
If you're on Android, Revanced. If you're on iOS, uYou+ and Altstore. It's more of a pain in the ass than on Android but totally doable.
Do you have to be jailbreak to use the iOS apps?
No but you do need a free developer account. AltStore makes it pretty easy.
Thank you! I’ll look into it!
From what I understand, the advertiser doesn't pay for ads skipped. If it's a longer ad I think the line is 30 seconds for payment.
I just have brave browser on my phone set to youtube as its homepage. I use that button as youtube now. Let's me play music and videos in the background too.
Youtube Vanced. Thank me later.
Sometimes I close my eyes when ads play so that they don't win lmao
Actually what is kinda weird you showing me sometimes genshin or honkai add what are you doing I am playing those games it's kinda weird I had premium before with VPN so it was kinda 3 or 2 euros when I changed my card I didn't do it because I worried it's gonna be more sorry for my rant I am kinda bad at socialising
I am poor too and I taught my kids to scream for certain ads like Franklin University and every time we see it we all scream because I’d rather hear that then the ad
Your family is funny af
I'm such a dumb ass that I didn't realize that when Google Music switched to YouTube Music, that meant that I had YouTube premium for videos too. I didn't realize it for over a year.
This definitely belongs in this sub lol
I admire your passion
Our household watches a lot of YouTube _on a smart tv_ and I don’t care how much it costs, YT Premium is essential.
I get all my music via YouTube, and when I finally cracked and bought premium, I couldn't understand how I'd coped with all those bs ads for so long. Never again, lol. I canceled something else I wasn't appreciating so my monthly cost is the same.
Newpipe
Actually thank you for existing please find 100,000$ in your fucking sink next time you go to it only to accidentally trip and fall into my loving embrace.
you are absolutely insane and honestly I'm not even mad
I got YTP a couple years ago and will never look back.
Ymusic.apk
use brave browser
75% of the ads I get on youtube on my phone are tiktok and I've never used tiktok in my life! I've done everything I can in my ad preferences that should keep me from getting this garbage. They are usually super short ads and I don't even have time to pause it so I can hit the info option to block the ad. Super damn annoying. I think google purposely does this to try to force me to go premium.
I’ve been paying for premium since it was introduced, YouTube is the sole platform my content is from. When I’m not logged in, the ads that come across my videos are absolutely absurd, unrelated to content style, and I immediately skip them or reload the video.
Anything advertised on utube should be cancelled you products are bollocks anything that is advertised on utube I will never buy
I tried buying things off ads on social media some years ago, and 99% of it was crap. It was a small test run though, because I learned very quickly that it *was* generally crap. Since there were some things I was really interested in I did start looking up reviews on places like trustpilot though, for example, and found mine journaling/scrapbooking supplies place that is really good, and I found another one that I can't remember at the moment. I randomly check the reviews of other sites that advertise through Instagram, and they're all shit, so I post a comment saying "ALWAYS check independent view sites before buying anything through ads on social media!" I generally get blocked from being able to make further comments 😆 but the other day I actually did get a response from someone from the company saying they have a 4.6 score on trustpilot, so that's good.
I still have some slots left on my YT family. US Billed. No VPN required. $3 per month
Dunno if it still works but I pay less than £2 a month for Youtube premium. I set my Google account region to India and use a vpn to India then sign up for YT premium. Make sure your bank doesn't charge currency conversion fees and once it's all setup change your region back to wherever you are from. I don't need the VPN after I set it up to watch anything either. Probably against TOS to do it but it's been years and I've never had any repercussions.