Strategy question
How would you price YouTube?
- YouTube
- Strategy
- Hard
Practice this question out loud. An AI interviewer asks it, follows up like a real interviewer would, and scores your answer. Type or speak.
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What this question tests
Pricing strategy across a multi sided business, ads, subscription, and creator economics, not just a single number.
How to approach it
- Clarify what is being priced: Premium subscription, ad rates, or a hypothetical from scratch pricing exercise.
- Segment users by willingness to pay: ad tolerant free users, ad averse subscribers, and creators who need sustainable revenue.
- Anchor Premium pricing against substitutes like Spotify or Netflix, which set a rough ceiling.
- Consider price discrimination: regional pricing and family or student plans to capture more willingness to pay.
- Note the creator revenue share constraint, since pricing changes affect the ad pool creators are paid from.
- Propose a structure: keep free ad supported as the base, tier Premium with add ons, and price regionally.
What a strong answer includes
- Treats pricing as multi sided rather than a single number, showing real platform economics understanding.
- Anchors Premium against real substitutes instead of guessing a price in a vacuum.
- Flags the creator revenue share tradeoff, a detail specific to YouTube's actual business model.
Common mistakes
- Answering with only an ad free subscription price and ignoring the ad and creator sides of the business.
- No anchor to comparable products when proposing a price point.
Likely follow-up questions
- How would you price differently across countries with very different income levels?
- How would a price change affect creator payouts, and how would you communicate that?
More strategy questions
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- How would you launch YouTube in a country that currently has no comparable or similar products?YouTube · Strategy · Medium
- What should YouTube do with GenAI?YouTube · Strategy · Hard
- Should YouTube Shorts be separated from the YouTube app? If yes, why? If no, why?Google · Strategy · Hard
- How would you get another billion monthly active users on YouTube?Google · Strategy · Hard
- How would you triple the revenue of YouTube?YouTube · Strategy · Hard
More questions from YouTube
Learn the skill behind it
Chapters of the AI PM course that teach what this question tests.
- Chapter 4: Discovery and strategy for AI products
- Chapter 9: Prove it paid off: outcomes, economics, and pricing
- Chapter 14: Get the job: the AI PM interview loop