YouTube has created a formal collection of Hollywood movies—including some heavy-hitters like The Terminator and the Rocky series—for free viewing.
“We saw this opportunity based on user demand, beyond just offering paid movies,” YouTube’s Rohit Dhawan told AdAge. “Can we do ad-supported movies, free to the user? It also presents a nice opportunity for advertisers.”
Meaning that, yes, these movies are ad-supported, and you will occasionally be interrupted by short ads while viewing. But that’s still a great trade-off, assuming the ads aren’t too intrusive. And it puts YouTube in an interesting position to compete with a new crop of small, ad-supported video streaming services like Tubi.
Of course, YouTube is part of a media empire, so these free movies are interspersed with a wide variety of other content. Which, by the way, can include any paid movies or TV shows you might have acquired with Google Play Movies & TV. Or synced to that service via Movies Anywhere. (As I pointed out this past summer, this syncing lets you watch your Movies Anywhere library via YouTube.)
You can find the free movies on YouTube’s Free to watch list. There are about 100 right now, but I would imagine this could grow as more studios experiment with the offering.
Tagged with YouTube
