• by Wendy Davis , July 15, 2026

Two YouTube Premium subscribers claim in a new lawsuit that Google violates consumer protection laws by interrupting streaming programs with ads, despite touting the service as ad-free.

"YouTube Premium does not offer an 'ad-free' and 'uninterrupted' experience," California residents William Fleming and Devin Rose allege in a class-action complaint filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. "To the contrary, advertisements and interruptions frequently appear during streamed content, interrupting videos with commercials for everything from popular automobiles to marketing for local attorneys or dietary supplements."

Fleming alleges that he subscribed to YouTube Premium in 2019, watches or listens to the service for around six hours each day, and "is subjected to advertising constantly."

"Just in the last week alone, videos he has viewed have been interrupted by ads from the dollarwise app, various gaming apps, and a service called Incogni," the complaint alleges.

Rose says he has subscribed to the service since 2018, and also "is commonly subjected to advertisements both before and during the videos that he streams while watching and/or listening to YouTube."\

Their complaint includes a screenshot from a sign-up page that compares YouTube Premium with YouTube Premium Lite, and describes the Premium service as ad-free for all videos, and the Premium Lite service as ad-free for most videos.

"A reasonable consumer would understand YouTube’s representations to mean that in exchange for monthly subscription payments, YouTube Premium will contain no ads and no interruptions," the complaint states. "In comparison, a reasonable consumer would understand that in exchange for a lesser monthly subscription payment, YouTube Premium Lite would display limited ads in some streaming content."

The complaint acknowledges that YouTube says in its Help center that some Premium videos have "branding or promotions" embedded by a video's creator, and also may have "promotional links, shelves and features in and around content that are added or enabled by the creator."

However, the plaintiffs say that the YouTube Help page is not part of the YouTube Premium terms that consumers accept when they subscribe.

They also allege that YouTube dupes consumers if it advertises the service as ad-free, but then serves ads it labels as "promotions."

"This is simply word games and double talk," the complaint states.

Google has not yet responded to MediaPost's request for comment.