You don't need me to tell you what GTA V is. Let's focus on the Premium Online Edition. It includes the single player mode, the multiplayer mode and a starting boost (the Criminal Enterprise pack) for online play.

The Criminal Enterprise pack helps with progression not by skipping gameplay, but by giving you some tools to make it less grindy. If your goal is buying and customizing sports car, armored vehicles, clothes and luxury penthouses, you will need to acquire money. Instead of being forced to run the less rewarding activities at the start of the game, the pack allows you to access a wider variety of jobs, thus making the process of acquiring money less tedious.

Of all the contents of the pack, the most important items are: an office building (in a perfectly good spot in town), which allows you to unlock VIP work and some of the most lucrative activities; a bunker, which is in a very bad spot and you will want to move out of it, but will allow you to rack in some cash nonetheless and to play some of the Gunrunning missions; a biker club completed with an illegal business (not the best, but nice to have), which will generate money while you are doing something else and, again, will unlock a series of biker gang missions and activities; a sports car (very fun to drive in my opinion) to expedite movement around the city; a helicopter (not weaponized, but still will help a lot in reaching all the locations); a cheap house and garage, useful if you want to start buying some nice cars without forking out a lot of money upfront for infrastructure: $!M, which again allows you to buy one of the lucrative business right away.

For instance, a basic convenience store robbery will net you $2k and a gang attack will net you $5k, while a VIP mission (unlocked right away with the Criminal Enterprise pack) will net you around $15k and a bunker sale will reward you with not less than $75k after costs are taken into account.

In my opinion the benefits are tangible, but as the game progresses and more content is added, ways to acquire money are also more abundant and more accessible even to lower level players. I wouldn't drop an extra 10 or 15 USD on the premium pack, but for a couple dollars it will remove the need for unrewarding activities at the beginning of the game and make them an option instead, which is a good tradeoff in my book. Get it on discount.