Jason Kilar's Vessel Drops Advertising For Subscribers

The streaming service has also inked deals for a small number of exclusive videos for a full year.

Online video service Vessel is going ad free.

The company, which former Hulu CEO Jason Kilar launched with a cadre of high-profile investors last year, says that it will stop showing ads to people who pay $2.99 a month for early access to videos from popular YouTubers.

The company has also announced a new $19.99 annual subscription that is also ad free.

"One of the most popular requests has been for an ad-free experience," CEO Jason Kilar writes in a blog posted on Monday.

Vessel will continue to offer some ad-supported videos, primarily licensed content, outside of its pay wall.

The company says it will also begin experimenting with videos that it will stream exclusively for a full year. Its initial partners on the new initiative include LInus Media Group, vlogger Brittani Louise Taylor and gamer JeromeASF.

"Vessel's ambitious mission has been to build a decidedly different — and better — video platform for creators and fans," continues Kilar. "While we are still very much in the early days, we have attracted subscribers from more than 155 countries to our offering of exclusive, early-access videos."

He adds that creators continue to make more than $50 per thousand views on the platform, which gives the lion's share of ad and subscription revenue to its partners. Meanwhile, the company now boasts a library of 300,000 videos from 250 partners, up 50 percent since last summer.

Vessel's move to do away with ads comes after YouTube announced its own ad-free product, the $10-per-month Red subscription service. The move also mirrors that of Kilar's old company, Hulu, which recently went ad free for the first time with a higher-priced subscription product.