Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
TL;DR YouTube viewers have noticed that connections from Albania don’t appear to be served advertisements.
As a result, connecting to YouTube through a VPN with an Albanian endpoint can be an alternative to paying for Premium to get ad-free content.
This method has its own expenses involved, could be risky, and isn’t guaranteed to last.
YouTube Premium — even paying full price for it — is easily one of the best values in streaming around. The sheer volume of content available is impossible for anyone else to touch, ranging from the briefest Shorts to satisfy our decimated attention spans, to award-winning, feature-length films. But despite there being very good reason to pony up for that ad-free YouTube Premium experience, some viewers are dead-set on not paying YouTube one extra penny. If that’s the camp you fall into, you’re going to want to know about this VPN hack.
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Here’s the gist of it: YouTube is a big, global phenomenon, and its ads department targets users all around the world. No matter where you’re accessing it, you can expect to see ads directed at the local demographic. At least, that’s the case nearly everywhere, but as TechRadar points out, that list doesn’t appear to include the European nation of Albania.
As a result, if you use a VPN to appear as if you’re accessing YouTube from Albania, you may not get served any ads at all — in its testing, TechRadar saw no ads even after 150 minutes of viewing.
Sounds great, right? What’s the catch? Well, there are several, actually.
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