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.
Tech bros reinvent broadcast TV.
With my NAS, plex and Usenet I reinvented streaming. It’s awesome.
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.
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?
I’m a big fan of Patreon.
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 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’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.
At this point if I’m ever responsible for making a tv show it will have obvious places for commercials to go just because I don’t want them butchering it.
Good luck, if you ever watch any of the free TV apps like freevee they will just hard cut in a commercial, sometimes in the middle of a sentence. Then they have the old places where a commercial was in the OG broadcast and it just fades to black and back. It’s really jarring to watch.
They want to squeeze out that extra bit of profit and get the users that never subscribed on there so they can boast about improved numbers.
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.
I have hardware dedicated to blocking ads on my home network.
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.
uBlock will manage :)
Ublock is not network level ad blocking.
But it helps in addition for the annoying stuff that is not possible to filter on the network.
It’s almost like all these CEOs and MBAs are just shooting in the dark because of the $$$ in their eyes, but the fact remains that the market is no longer responding favorably to their absolute need for year-over-year growth.
I’ll take “Organizations that made it to the top by doing something different, only to fall under leadership that doesn’t understand what made them successful and descend into ruins” for 200, Alex.
Seriously, Jeopardy team - this is a rich category:
- Netflix advertisements.
- Zoom mandates staff return to offices.
- Microsoft forgets what the “P” in “PC” stands for.
- Toys R Us implements a shitty holiday gift returns policy.
- Sears decides to sacrifice reputation for quarterly stock price gains.
- Walgreens decides bottom-of-the-barrel incompetent pharmacists can uphold their “get it all done in one visit” secret sauce.
- Radio Shack decides that once-every-two-years cellphone contract sales are the future for holding passionate electronics hobbyists’ loyalty.
Netflix can’t do what got them to the top.
Fuck everything about the changes they’ve made for the last several years, but they were always going to hit a wall when content owners put their content on their own platforms.
Netflix can’t do what got them to the top.
They can’t grow that way but they could easily hold on and remain profitable, popular and successful.
They were well on their way to enjoying “Kleenex” or “Oreo” stable market success, but their leadership and shareholders apparently aren’t satisfied with winning.
This is step 86 in the plan. Step 87 is make people pay for the previously free service
“The enshittifucation will continue until profits improve.” --CEOs of Publicly Traded Companies
