Have you often found yourself sitting at home on a Saturday night, wanting to watch James Cameron’s delightful romp, The Terminator? After a quick jaunt over to JustWatch, you realise that you’re out of luck unless you have a subscription to Stan, so what do you do? Well, it seems that the answer could soon be YouTube.

As Ad Age reports, YouTube have recently begun to offer full-length versions of a series of Hollywood blockbusters for their US viewers. The catch? Just a few ads here and there.

If you’re thinking this sounds familiar, that’s because it’s basically the same premise as a little invention called television, only now delivered on an on-demand basis.

According to Ad Age, YouTube have been offering this service for a few weeks now, with the streaming giant previously offering digital rentals for quite some time now.

“We saw this opportunity based on user demand, beyond just offering paid movies. Can we do ad-supported movies, free to the user?” explained YouTube’s director of product management Rohit Dhawan. “It also presents a nice opportunity for advertisers.”

While ads have often been considered the scourge of frustration for many YouTube users, many people are starting to think that an occasional interruption might be a small price to pay for free access to some big-name movies.

“Ad-supported video is a huge market,” explains Tubi CEO Farhad Massoudi. “There’s a lot of consumer traction and I expect all the major companies will jump in at some point.”

“This is a huge business opportunity. Low-quality, low-production video is predominantly what’s available on the web, and advertisers have seen a lot of issues with that. They don’t want to be associated with that type of content.”

While Netflix made a few folks apprehensive back in August when it was revealed they were testing ads, there’s no word yet as to just how successful YouTube’s brush with advertising is going to be.

At this stage though, ad-supported blockbusters are only available for US viewers, with Australians being met with that dreaded “The uploader has not made this video available in your country” message.

However, if this test ends up being a success, there’s every chance that YouTube could be scoring the broadcasting rights for a number of big-name movies and shows for locals in no time.

Check out a list of ad-supported movies currently available for US viewers here.

Check out the trailer for The Terminator:

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