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 advertising ouroboros continues to devour itself
If they aren’t going to charge for access otherwise then I don’t think being ad supported is such a bad thing. Much more honest than subscription pricing and ads in my opinion.
yeah, imo it’s either ads or paid. not both. both is scummy
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.
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.
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.
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.
Oreo was originally a ripoff so it makes sense.
still gonna stick to torrents for my media netflix cause i wanna actually have control of them
Great for piracy!
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.
Time to bring back Tivo
That’s the problem. They already wisened up and HDMI, the propietary standard they forced everyone to change to for HD+, has built-in DRM. Most smart TV have DRM built-in as well.
Cryptanalysis researchers demonstrated flaws in HDCP as early as 2001. In September 2010, an HDCP master key that allows for the generation of valid device keys was released to the public, rendering the key revocation feature of HDCP useless.[8][9] Intel has confirmed that the crack is real,[10] and believes the master key was reverse engineered rather than leaked.[11] In practical terms, the impact of the crack has been described as “the digital equivalent of pointing a video camera at the TV”, and of limited importance for consumers because the encryption of high-definition discs has been attacked directly, with the loss of interactive features like menus.[12] Intel threatened to sue anyone producing an unlicensed device.[11]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-bandwidth_Digital_Content_Protection
I’m aware of this. But no corporation will ever let anyone get even close to releasing a consumer product like TiVo used to be.
Then it can be an open source project like PiHole that runs on a raspberry pi and that only cool people know about
They would be ceased and desisted out of existence. There’s a reason no one on the scene right now discloses methods and streaming piracy is a closely guarded secret. I’m sure it is perfectly possible, as that is how most piracy occurs nowadays. But it is extremely technical and most likely risks exposing any person doing it wrong.
Well it would be something that is for, you know, research. Like the core technology exists in a GitHub repo for science and the public interest, but the master keys are just not included, and up for you to procure on your own with a “legitimate license.”
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.
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…
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
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.
“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
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.
This is step 86 in the plan. Step 87 is make people pay for the previously free service
Didn’t they already had a paid and with ads tier?
Yeah but now the roped in new suckers that didn’t know they need the product and the price is now 10 per month
Growth hacking. Shake loose more market share with the “FREE!!” version and then the frog boil
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
Would you put blame on doctors for contributing to the opioid?
I’m gonna assume by “contributing to the opioid” you mean over-prescribing pain medication for the commission? If so, that comparison is so far-fetched that it’s completely meaningless. You’re really going to compare that with independent creators having skippable ad reads that have to be clearly marked as such on content you get for free?
Mind explains what is far fetched about it?
Like can you explain what the original argument was and why the comparison I made would be far fetched in that context?
For me, it depends on what they’re promoting. If it’s some crappy mobile game or crypto, I’m out. But I’m fine with the usual shit like energy drinks or VPNs. Like, those things usually have a serious business behind them, even if they might be useless for the vast majority of viewers.
If Netflix ads were just energy drinks and VPN then you’re cool with them adding these tiers?
Honest to god question. How many hours a day are you OK being spent on being sold something. What is your ratio of content to ads.
It’s a little different with Netflix, because of what they started out as. With Youtube, I expected to be advertised to from the beginning, you know? I pay for Youtube Premium and use Sponsor Block to support the creators I watch while having a mostly ad free experience. Also, I just trust most of the creators that I watch to have my best interest in mind in terms of what they advertise.
But for Netflix, their whole thing from the beginning was that they were better TV. That’s how they sold it to me. Now they’re slowly losing their point. So I’d definitely not be alright with it if they started showing me ads on top of my subscription fee. Same with Prime Video, because I know they’re experimenting with that.
Yep. I don’t hate youtubers for doing ads. Everyone needs to make money. Just skip the ads.
Except for Ryan George because he actually makes his funny as fuck.
I’m a big fan of Patreon.
Sure, Patreon is great, but Patreon alone is not enough for most creators to make a living, considering how hard it is to get people to commit to monthly subscriptions.
Patreon alone is not enough for most creators to make a living
I’ve seen a number of content creators argue otherwise. From the “Hello from the Magic Tavern” sketch comedy group to the “Scenes from the Multiverse” Cartoonist to the various musicians cranking out indie tunes on Bandcamp, the refrain I consistently here is that direct patronage offers significantly better returns than ad-supported payments on bigger media platforms.
Indie creators generally have an easier time of securing monthly subscriptions because they’re more boutique and have closer connections to the audience. And you don’t need an enormous audience to bring in a reliable income. While YouTubers need to get into the hundreds of thousands of subscribers to see any kind of productive ROI, Patreon artists can justify the expense of their work on an audience in the hundreds. They can go entirely indie with an audience in the thousands.
Most creators can’t afford to go fully indie, but the margins are so much better relative to the audience size with direct payments. Even just $2/viewer/episode pays vastly more than what a streaming service offers.
But why do they need to make a living creating content.
We should go back to hobbyist sharing videos of their hobby and interest for the love of it instead of a guy trying to make money by jumping into trendy hobbies and creating bland generic content until the algorithm picks them.
It would reduce so much noise online and the stuff we would be left with would be people who have the best content. It would eliminate the drama and toxic crap for views.
There are certainly hobbyists making good content. Most of the great content is from people making a living off it. They have time and resources to devote to doing deep dives into subjects that hobbyists just generally don’t. The bigger problem as far as filling the internet with crap goes is all the react content and people making clips of other people’s stuff that adds nothing to it and whatever YouTube shorts are supposed to be.
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
Yes
Who reveres and emulates PewDiePie lol
Too fucking many. But replace him with any of them. Speed, H2, Moist, donkey something. We use to have to walk uphill both ways in the snow to see content.
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.
Im the one that was paying for Netflix for my family, but the password crack down motivated me to learn how to build a server and go full arrs. They had a good thing going, but now that $26 a month will be used to buy hdds.
