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.
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.
The entire source of their growth was “you can get almost anything you want to watch for one low monthly cost”. They no longer have rights to any of that content, and for most of it didn’t even get an opportunity to make a bid.
It’s the equivalent of Oreo shipping 3 Oreos in a big box for 3x the price. But also they had to change their recipe because they didn’t own the old one.
Oreo was originally a ripoff so it makes sense.
Yeah. Netflix got really lucky with streaming for as long as they did and they knew it. Cable and broadcast subsidized their content and they were able to lease it for pennies on the dollar.
Of course, people don’t want to admit that the subsidy for their content is gone and they are pissed about rising costs.
I don’t care about the why. It was worth it.
Now it’s not worth it.
Then cancel and move on.
The way that people talk about it here, a streaming service raising rates is the equivalent of a significant other dumping them.
I did. A long time ago.
People are allowed to recognize a dogshit excuse for a product is a bad product.
I worked at Radio Shack in 2012 for a few months and was told by my boss that if a customer wasn’t there to buy a cell phone, be as little help to them as possible.
It’s a shame they went under during the rise of the maker movement. What an asset they could have been. I remember they started carrying arduino near the end and thought somebody must have tried to reach for their roots. Too little, too late.
I had quit in October of that year because I found a much better job that I ended up working at for 11 years. In those few short months though it was wild all the things that happened in that store. That store was in a mall and it didn’t last a year after I quit. They had a going out of business sale and I got a ton of arduino stuff for 75% off.
That’s heartbreaking. Radio Shack was so fun, while it lasted.
Ads provide a much needed break so I can check my phone without missing anything.
/s
watch youtube videos on your phone while the Netflix ads play -> Watch Netflix on your TV while the youtube ads play. Perfection
Life is stupid. What are we even DOING here???
That’s a broad leap no? Giants rise and fall. Look at betamax, BlockBuster, Kodak, etc
There’s always going to be something better out there, as long as you’re still looking and leaving the old post. Chin up!
…betamax as a giant? They entered a format war, and died in their first few years of existance.
The others I get. Kodak was around almost 100 years, blockbuster nearly 40, both at one time the dominant leaders of their industries. Both fell to failing to adapt to change.
But betamax? It came out around the same time as vhs, and vhs was cheaper.
Same with 8-tracks and cassettes.
I mean, my point still stands but if we want to talk about semantics - are you saying betamax wasn’t a giant?
Obviously they entered the vhs war and lost, but after that it was pretty much downhill for the rest of their company and products. They were a big name brand and crashed out by entering a war they ultimately lost. That’s all I’m tryin to get at
Building shareholder value, duh.
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.
What hardware do you use? I have a pihole. Unfortunately it doesn’t block ads on Youtube except in the web browser.
For a long time my pihole was able to do it with some regex entries, but Google was pretty persistent about not letting that work, so for Android I just started doing Revanced.
Like you said, the web browser still blocks fine.
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.
Not when they are part of the same stream
And not when your client is a Netflix app on your smart tv.
“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
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.
Obviously the majority of content is not going to be available. It will essentially b a Tubi clone or what Netflix streaming was when they first launched it.
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.
It isn’t? You might be looking at a different market.
When my paid service started giving me ads I stopped watching it. I’ve been paying them since before streaming and in the past couple years stopped paying because T-Mobile started paying. When T-Mobile quits paying we’ll close the account.
They already have an ad tier (tmobile bundles it into some of their plans). Is this going to be an even more ad tier?
Mega ad tier.
Removed by mod
There is one benefit, at least for now. You aren’t locked into long term contracts like cable has/had.
Imo that’s pretty much the only benefit these days. But I’m also waiting for those 1 year, 2 year, etc “deals” where they offer $1/mo off or something
Don’t they already do that? I swear I saw a streaming service that offered 20% off the price if you agreed to pay 2 years in advance or something like that. That is already a thing on SaaS subscriptions.
I know Hulu has an annual billing option where they won’t prorate your bill if you cancel mid term, but I don’t know if there are any that just flat out won’t let you cancel.
I expect to see this soon as a way of combatting people who join one for a month or two, binge, then switch to another provider.
It might not come in the form of contracts at first, maybe they will just jack up the price of month to month high enough that people will voluntarily buy into a contract or yearly pre-purchase.
Trust me, there is always a way to make more money if you’re OK with being anti-consumer. It’s just a matter of time.
Not until we’re having to sit through upwards of 20 minutes on ads per “1 hour” episode
The difference is that my ad blocker is quick and painless to set up, where TiVo involved some capital and planning.
Didn’t some cable companies get all butthurt that you could fast forward through the recorded commercials?
For now. YouTube is already starting to dedicate serious resources to anti ad blocking. I’m sure other streaming services aren’t that far behind.
but more more inconvenient since now you have about ten different apps instead of everything in the same place.
Rebrand to CableFlix
Great for piracy!
Doesn’t this already exist or did I imagine it?
I thought they introduced it years ago
Edit: oh I read again, this time it’s free
Then:
Pay + adNow:
Free to watch + adsSee, now I’m fine with that. I pay for Netflix and I want what I pay for to stay ad-free. Having an ad-supported tier with no fee in addition to that means that there are options for other people without enshittifying my experience.
That’s a world of difference to what Amazon have done where they’ve shoved ads into the service that I thought I was paying for, and then offered to charge me even more to get my original ad-free service back.
Yeah, it’s the reason I cancelled Amazon the day they announced that, while Netflix shambles on.
I won’t support any streaming service that has a sub+ad tier. Ads with no sub or sub no ads, anything else is incredibly greedy and the same as cable TV.
Piracy it is then…
