Netflix, once a pioneer of ad-free viewing that offered a break from traditional TV norms, is now contemplating launching free ad-supported versions of its service in markets like Europe and Asia, Bloomberg reported.
The plans to offer a free ad-supported tier, albeit in select markets, suggests that pivot towards monetizing user data, in other words — making users and not the extensive library of award-winning shows a product, might be well in the pipeline.
the ads are minimally intrusive — that is, highly relevant and engaging — they should not detract from the overall user experience
In what universe do ads, no matter how “relevant and engaging”, ever not detract from the overall experience?
I’ve been watching Monk recently, without ads, and it’s very interesting how television shows used to be written and edited for commercials. It’s dead obvious where the commercials used to be, and even that detracts from the overall experience.
Some shows we’ve watched spend their time “recapping” after the 'ad breaks", playing same scenes we just saw. Drives me nuts, wastes my time and feels so dated.
Monk doesn’t go that far, and it’s still obvious. “Here’s a joke before commercial!” Pause. Fade back in to a new scene. Pause. “Here’s a little cliffhanger before commercial!” Pause. Fade back in to a new scene. Pause.
I always thought it would be a nice addition to piracy for a release group to edit a version of shows that cuts the recaps and makes a more unified episode. I would totally only ever download their releases.
That was a trope of real tv shows especially , and also a way to fill time with less filmed content i.e cost cutting. Often you’d see many shots 5-7 times throughout the show. Opening montage , before ad tease, after ad recap, thr event itself, end of show montage summary etc. Also drives me nuts. Even back when ads were between. “Yes I know what happened two minutes ago!”. And then there were so many shows you could tell the edit project file was a template and they just replaced the footage. Same exact structure every episode.
God I’ve been watching through Bleach and it’s like this. Each 22 minute episode is really only about 12 minutes long with the rest being a 5 minute recap of the previous episode, the intro, credits, and post credit filler.
Edit: a tangent of this would be watching a sitcom with the laugh track removed. Imagine seeing the actors awkwardly standing there in silence in the middle of their dialog where the laugh track would normally be inserted.
A funny second tangent is the musicless music videos on YouTube. Definitely worth checking out for a laugh.
Same, been watching Dead Like Me and Xena: Warrior Princess and it’s pretty distracting when it happens.
we were not the customers… we were the product lol…
yeah it hurts, so let’s stop allowing ads into our lives as much as possible…
the fact that netflix wants to offer it for free is telling what their core business is turning into…
I don’t mind those breaks… It feels like going to the next chapter in a book.
But actual ads, yea, not for a service that costs.
Though this whole thing is funny - they collect even more user data than they did with cable or broadcast, and now want to show you ads too.
Can’t wait to finish my media server setup.
I don’t mind when it’s an obvious break followed by a new scene. I do mind when the break is in the middle of a scene and they essentially replay the last thirty seconds before continuing the story. It just feels very disjointed and dated.
There are also shows that based jokes around the fact that they were going to or just came back from a commercial break and now you don’t have those in those shows. And now, I guess, they’ll go back to editing shows for ads.
What a weird modern landscape we’ve made for ourselves.
I hate ads, but sometimes prime puts 2 minutes of ads at the beginning of a show or a movie and then no ads, I’m ok-ish with this, much better than imdb or tubi that play the same commercial every 15 minutes
If I start a stream and it shows that it will have several breaks I stop it and get it from the high seas
I would be fine with that if it was free and didn’t reply the ads if I stop and resume.
If I am paying money, then ads are unacceptable.
I wish they wouldn’t do that. If i have to hear about Southern New Hampshire University again I’m gonna hurt somebody.
If I agree to free thing and have to watch ads, aight fine.
But at least make them different man, i hate that they play the same one over and over again. It does not make me want to buy your product.
I was sitting in a diner the other day and one of their TV’s was apparently, for lack of a better word, tuned to that Samsung TV Plus service. I watched it play the same Kia ad four times, back to back. Not in separate commercial breaks. All in one commercial break where the same ad was played four times consecutively.
Just like you, I have to say they found no success in making me want to buy a Kia.
Especially in shows not edited for commercials. They just throw them in the middle somewhere so the show gets cut mid-sentence. It’s ridiculous. If you want to show me ads after that episode, then fine. But killing the entire pacing of the show for your ads in a service people are paying for already? that’s just infuriating.
Always does but some implementations are better than others and bills still need to get paid. Network TV can’t force you to watch ads before beginning your program, but streaming can. I’m irritated that Prime has ads even though I pay for it but at least the way they handle them (only before the program starts) is acceptable to me. Interrupting a program to show ads the way YouTube does is horrible customer experience. What’s crazy to me is the way network tv shows have gone from 22 minutes in a 30 minute block to 17-19 minutes.
Honest answer? Kids toys ads. The kids love the ads more than the show sometimes.
It sucks for parents though. Gets expensive.
I just wish they could bundle all the subscriptions into packages or bundles and I could watch the shows at pre-determined times.
They could even provide an electronic box (for a nominal fee, or course) that shows me a menu of all the shows and movies that are available and what times they are going to play. That way I wouldn’t have to search through a bunch of streaming services. It could all just be in one place.
Maybe they could add some kind of auto scrolling view that informs what is playing at those times? That’d be handy, sometimes I can’t find anything to watch.
Cool thing about this is they could assemble these bundles into parallel live streams we could simply flick between to find what we prefer to watch. If they run into a problem of people flicking away when ads run then just align the ads to run at the same time on each “channel” if I can call them that ?
Tech bros reinvent broadcast TV.
Told people this years ago when pewdie pie became a millionaire selling ads. Like that was the time to wake up and hate every single one of these content creators for selling out and making the internet the hellscape this is. But no we Revere and emulate these people.
This is a bit unnecessarily tough on independent content creators… what exactly do you expect them to do? Make no money from their content? How would they be able to make a living?
Would you put blame on doctors for contributing to the opioid?
I see it the same. Every one bares responsibility. And even though a big chunk is on the pharma and media companies. There is still the pusher
Like that was the time to wake up and hate every single one of these content creators for selling out
And then what? Stop consuming their content?
Sure, or accept that you participating in that industry will always lead to this stuff.
What do people want here. In what world do you think you can separate the two things. Monetizing content through ads and marketing and a world where ads and marketing are not capitalized on.
We all had to stop this decades ago when it was a tiny little part of the internet. You can’t kill it once its tendrils are in every corner its grown into Fafnir
You all have to get better at listening to the crazy ranting of random strangers with hair triggers and obsess over things you don’t care about. Otherwise the future is bleek
What’s even crazier is kids today will never realize the freedom that the first few decades of the internet was when the topic of information scarcity was supposed to end.
We were all so against the idea that capitalist and opportunistic people could artificially create scarcity to make us all pay more. They did it through monopolies on industry’s that choked out smaller competitors. The internet was a new frontier that was supposed to reject that. We could digitally copy and share everything. Hero’s shot up and built all kinds of amazing tools and things. Then it got popular and we recreated the same scarcity issues within decades. Everything trapped behind walls and monetized. Instead of open courseware at Berkeley we favored monthly subscriptions to udemy.
This is the average 6 year olds dream right now. A life where they can emulate a NASCAR fender and live that twitch life just like their heroes Pewdie and Moist and whatever else. Those kids grow up with that mentality and end up shaping a new generation pulling away from what all this could have been.
What I fears is that its a matter of time before entertainment industry figures out a way to stop those services. I’ve even begun to see discussions that open source may be struggling to remain relevant. Whose taking over for the power houses from early days. So much talent out there. But I really worry the community will shrink over time because we all raiser a generation on the concept of monetization rather than open collaboration. I look out on the internet and the loudest voices are artists and content creators. Both groups who push the fuck you pay me mentality that I believe was not what we all had originally on the internet and it makes me so worried to think how that will only grow if there is no push back.
There’s no better ad for piracy than the greed of corporations. Don’t let ads shit in your head. They disrespect you, you disrespect them.
That will only go so far unfortunately. And network level ad blocking won’t protect you from their ads if they’re served from the same servers the content is.
What hardware do you use? I have a pihole. Unfortunately it doesn’t block ads on Youtube except in the web browser.
“People are taking the piss out of you every day. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you. You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity. Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head. You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.”
Banksy
This is step 86 in the plan. Step 87 is make people pay for the previously free service
