YouTube Premium users around the world woke up to bad news today. In over a dozen countries, the price of YouTube Premium individual and family plans increased significantly. This is only the most recent sweep of price increases from Google, as many countries saw price jumps only months ago, with the United States being one of them last summer.

YouTube Premium has increased its subscription prices for Malaysian users, the first such increase for individual subscribers since the service was introduced in 2019 but the second in just over a year for those on the Family package.

Subscribers to YouTube Premium and YouTube Music Premium in Singapore are the latest to be hit with price hikes, some as high as 56 per cent, following similar moves in other countries. In a notice sent to current subscribers of the service on Sept 21,

The Google-owned video sharing platform has widely rolled out "pause ads" ‒ static advertisements that appear on-screen when a video is paused ‒ to all advertisers. Already popular with various streaming services, experts say pause ads are an easy way for platforms like YouTube to add another revenue stream.

First, YouTube subjugated viewers to longer unskippable ads. Now, not even pausing your screen will be an escape from them.

It’s been nearly six years since we warned you that ads were coming for your pause button and 18 months since Google revealed that YouTube would serve them up, too. Now, YouTube confirms advertisers can broadly target your paused screentime: “As we’ve seen both strong advertiser and strong viewer response,