YouTube users could soon pay a subscription fee to avoid seeing ads on the streaming video service, CEO Susan Wojcicki has confirmed.

Speaking at Re/codes Code/Mobile conference last night, she said the platform was exploring the launch of an ad-free subscription service. “YouTube right now is ad-supported, which is great because it has enabled us to scale to a billion users; but theres going to be a point where people dont want to see the ads,” said Wojcicki during an interview.

YouTube already offers a paid-for subscription service, enabling content creators to sell subscriptions to users from as little as $0.99 (£0.61) a month, which grant them access to longer content such as full episodes of shows, but these subscriptions still include ads.

It is likely that the introduction of an ad-free paid subscription option would also increase the number of ads served to non-subscribers, in an effort to both maintain impression counts, and as a way of pushing users towards the subscription service by making advertising more intrusive.

Wojcicki also revealed that 50 per cent of YouTube views are now coming from mobile devices, as more and more consumers engage with video content in this way, and that the site is increasing watch time by 50 per cent each year, although is still a long way from catching up with television.