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Kids In 'Netflix Only' Homes Are Being Saved From 230 Hours of Commercials a Year, Says Report (exstreamist.com) 118

Posted by BeauHD from the cause-and-effect dept.
With more kids than ever using streaming services like Netflix for their entertainment, Exstreamist wanted to see what this means for the advertising industry. They were able to determine that kids in "Netflix Only" homes are saved from just over 230 hours of commercials a year when compared to traditional television viewership homes. From the report: We pulled numbers from the National Institute of Health, and found that children are watching 2.68 hours of television a day (in some cases, up to nine hours). In homes with more technology devices like tablets and kid-accessible computers, screen time jumps by approximately one hour per day. Currently, the average hour of television contains 14.25 minutes of commercials, or about 24% of airtime. Networks are even speeding up shows to cram more commercials into each episode. With that in mind, if a kid were watching traditional television, they would be seeing 230 hours of commercials a year, or 9.6 days. Netflix, and other services with kid-specific offerings like Amazon Video and Hulu, make it much easier for parents to control their kids' entertainment options. They offer an easy way to keep a child entertained with no commercial interruption.
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Kids In 'Netflix Only' Homes Are Being Saved From 230 Hours of Commercials a Year, Says Report More

Kids In 'Netflix Only' Homes Are Being Saved From 230 Hours of Commercials a Year, Says Report

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  • YUP (Score:2)

    by zlives ( 2009072 )

    before that dvr everything

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by quenda ( 644621 )

      before that dvr everything

      Before that VHS everything. But so much easier with PVR, especially since TV went digital.
      My children grew up without ever seeing a TV ad, except at friend's houses. And they never complained.
      It helps that we have a national broadcaster with lots of good children's content.

  • Although it's probably great that kids are being shielded from ads, frankly I find it even more useful being an adult! These days I just don't watch any programming that has ads - I watch content either on Netflix, Prime Video (now that they have an AppleTV app), Starz, HBO Go, or purchase seasons of some shows on iTunes. I cannot even watch YouTube much the commercials are so grating now.

    The funny thing is I think kids ads are less harmful. I remember them fondly from when I was a kid...

    • >I cannot even watch YouTube much the commercials are so grating now.

      Same solution. Pay for YouTubeRed and the commercials go away. I tend to use youtube all day for music streaming and hobby related stuff, so it's a reasonable deal. If you subscribe to something else for music, then maybe not so much.

      • I've considered it but there's not quite enough content on YouTube I care about to make that worthwhile - and I really hate giving money to Google (but not so much that I don't host my business email with them, sigh). I probably should just bite that bullet.

        • and I really hate giving money to Google (but not so much that I don't host my business email with them, sigh). I probably should just bite that bullet.

          1.) use an ad blocker if you don't like giving money to google.
          2.) google get's most of its money from ads.
          3.) subscriptions for zero adverts are a cop-out - if you're going to subscribe, do it for any exclusive content.

      • YouTube RED isn't available everywhere yet. I've personally solved the problem by using adblockers. Once and a while I'll turn it off for the channels I really care about.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by quenda ( 644621 )

        I don't watch enough youtube to pay, but they keep offering 4-month free trials with google music, so its not an issue.
        Adblock works well too, except on Android.

      • Same solution. Pay for YouTubeRed and the commercials go away.

        Fuck that sideways. Google is taking Youtube off of Amazon devices, and I'm supposed to pay for the privilege of having to purchase another media player? Google can eat every bowl of dicks up.

        • Same solution. Pay for YouTubeRed and the commercials go away.

          Fuck that sideways. Google is taking Youtube off of Amazon devices, and I'm supposed to pay for the privilege of having to purchase another media player? Google can eat every bowl of dicks up.

          It works fine on a real computer.

          • It works fine on a real computer.

            There is a lack of enthusiasm among 50% of the members of my household for using a PC to do this job.

            • It works fine on a real computer.

              There is a lack of enthusiasm among 50% of the members of my household for using a PC to do this job.

              Kids these days.

    • The funny thing is I think kids ads are less harmful. I remember them fondly from when I was a kid...

      The current generation of kids will have fond memories of watching their favorite YouTube Let's Play or Twitch videogame streams.

    • Yep. Run ad blockers on a real browser. FF or Chrome. Or for the non technical look at the Brave browser. It has blockers from the EFF built in. This is what I shifted my parents onto. It dropped my required tech help by 90%. Avoid the black boxes (Apple TV, Roku) and their apps. Because of no ad blockers available. You can run Brave on android phone/pad to chromecast and have ad blockers.

      https://brave.com/ [brave.com]
      " Brave Software was co-founded by Brendan Eich, co-founder of Mozilla and creator of JavaScript, and

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      You kind of failed to mention the impact of seeing an ad now. When you grew up with them, you became used to them, but be cut off from them for a few years and wow, you can watch one every now and then (at least a week apart or month or more) and it is kind of weird but any more than that and it is offensive, actually offensive. It feels like some arsehole has wandered into your home screaming that you buy crap and after the advertisement, instead of buying that crap, you now hate the product and company th

    • These days I just don't watch any programming that has ads - I watch content either on Netflix, Prime Video (now that they have an AppleTV app), Starz, HBO Go, or purchase seasons of some shows on iTunes. I cannot even watch YouTube much the commercials are so grating now.

      I've noticed that on the rare occasion I do see a commercial come up, it's really jarring. When I watch a basketball game or something it's like I don't even know how to act any more. I'm unable to just sit through them. Anyway, all the

  • I don't see ads any more. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Maxo-Texas ( 864189 ) on Thursday December 21, 2017 @06:11PM (#55786025)

    Funny thing, I don't see, process, or store commercials from any media any more. I mute the sound, I go do something else, switch to another window, slide the screen so the adds are off of the monitor, but mainly I think my brain has developed strong anti-advertising routines.

    • Re:I don't see ads any more. (Score:5, Informative)

      by waspleg ( 316038 ) on Thursday December 21, 2017 @06:16PM (#55786061) Journal

      pfsense + pfblockerng + DNSBL + multiple good sources = no ads.

      I don't have to do anything but press play on youtube on my tv and never see anything but the video I came to see.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Mitreya ( 579078 )

      I don't see, process, or store commercials from any media any more.

      Every time I stay at a hotel, turning on a TV is quite a shock.
      The ads are obnoxious and long (In 70s shows used to have 26 minute per episode, current ones have 22, for the same half-hour slot).

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • I think my brain has developed strong anti-advertising routines.

      That's good, mine too. But children's brains haven't, and very young children are incapable of telling the difference between commercials and shows.

      • Well you have a good point!

        My daughter tells my grandkids, "That's real" and "That's not real".

        And she doesn't reward commercials with purchases so they didn't learn to pay attention to commercials.

        And they watch a lot of commercial free stuff on Netflix (tho TBH, the lego movies used to be commercials for legos- tho I'm not sure they are any more).

    • I did that as well, it became an automatic process. Now I PVR TV shows that get dumped on my PC where a script removes the ads automatically and then we watch at our leisure.

  • "Madmen" got me back into smoking (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I didn't see a single damn advertisement as I was watching it on Netflix back when.

    I'd visited another country where cigs were 25cents a pack, and thought I'd just do it on vacation... lol. Got home, started watching madmen, and all of the sudden I really wanted a cigarette again.

    I was, eventually, able to fully stop... just pointing out that I'm sure product placement in tv shows has sky rocketed.

    • So you watched people smoking, it had no effect.
      You started smoking then quit again
      You watched people smoking and wanted a cigarette.

      The only difference before and after was you, not what you were watching.

  • I must have missed we news were Netflix vowed to only show content that did not contain product placement or was sponsored by some company.

  • What about radio? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I had the unfortunate incident of running shotgun in my partners car the other day and counted 16 commercials before I begged her to switch it off. Completely off the shelf, obnoxious, poisonous brainwashing drivel. Unfortunately there are no realtime radio or "TV" adblockers...

  • Best Table in the Report - Have Yard? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The mean area of the houses was 181.9 ± 85.4 m2, ranging from 50 to 550 m2. There were 166 (88.80%) families who had yard in their houses and 134 (80.70%) of the families reported that their children could play in the yard. The group differences on the basis of the number of hours of TV watching were statistically significant, favoring those who did have yards.

    Table 4 [nih.gov]

    Having a yard
    Yes - 2.58 hr/day
    No - 3.48 hr/day

  • And 1000s of hours of headaches (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Every 30 second commercial targeted to kids leads to minutes of "can I have this? no you can't". 2 days after our daughter started noticing the commercials and asking for what she was seeing we cancelled cable and starting streaming only. It's been 3 years of pure bliss and saved $1000s over Comcast.

    Our kids only see Netflix and anything else we might rent through Google or Amazon. They don't get exposed to Hulu and their erectile dysfunction or other pharma ads. They only get maybe 30 minutes of tv ti

    • as an interesting aside to this:
      As a cord never I haven't seen ads in forever (I only have had cable / uverse when there was zero cost to me). Interestingly this has led me to forgetting that ads are skippable on DVR'd content I may watch elsewhere.

  • Was to cut the cord and get my entertainment from netflix!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by GNious ( 953874 )

      Can't help thinking back to when it was, "Yay, we got satellite Pay TV, no more ads!" ... couple of years later, there were ads.

      • Can't help thinking back to when it was, "Yay, we got satellite Pay TV, no more ads!" ... couple of years later, there were ads.

        This time is different because the content is unbundled from the transport, so there is choice. At least, until the carriers take advantage of the new lack of net neutrality laws to kill Netflix.

  • Can anyone please provide me to a well cited peer-reviewed study that demonstrated that watching ads had any negative effect on a human of any age at all?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mspohr ( 589790 )

      Well, you could jut googleit:
      https://scholar.google.com/sch... [google.com]

      • Or you could, you know, read your own google results. None of those results actually say anything about negative effects of advertising.

        • It's somewhat tangential to what I believe the intent of your question is but:
          https://www.omicsonline.org/op... [omicsonline.org]
          http://healthland.time.com/201... [time.com]

          And this link (Ads for sugared products leading to obesity) is generally accepted as a ground truth of advertising to children. I fully accept the inevitable counter argument of "parenting", but as a parent I will also say, there are times when you cave just to get the kids to STFU and give you a moment of peace.

          • It's somewhat tangential to what I believe the intent of your question is but: https://www.omicsonline.org/op... [omicsonline.org] http://healthland.time.com/201... [time.com]

            And this link (Ads for sugared products leading to obesity) is generally accepted as a ground truth of advertising to children. I fully accept the inevitable counter argument of "parenting", but as a parent I will also say, there are times when you cave just to get the kids to STFU and give you a moment of peace.

            So the result is that advertising makes kids want things. No kidding. That's not harming them.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mspohr ( 589790 )

          I'm impressed that you read all 2.8 million results and didn't find anything.
          Here's another one for you. Maybe you'll have better luck here (only 1.6 million results)
          https://scholar.google.com/sch... [google.com]

  • My grandkids don't watch OTA TV and watch Netflix instead.
    This Christmas, they couldn't think of any $nameBrand stuff to put on their Christmas lists.
    I'm quite happy about this.

  • Unfortunately that was replaced with 230 hours of My Lil Pony. My poor daughter is like, "Dad you've seen this episode a thousand times!" Whatever, Rainbow Dash is the boss!

  • My kids watch only so-called commercial-free kids shows on Netflix and YouTube. Shows like Pokemon and Lego Ninjago/Chima/Nexo Knights. In reality, they get bombarded with a commercial-to-airtime ratio of 100% instead of 24%. The difference between Netflix et al. and shows with explicit commercials is the mix of commercials and not the total commercial exposure time.

    • I don't know if that's really such a bad thing. Kids like playing with toys and characters they see on TV, which is fine if the toys themselves stimulate their creativity or imagination...like Lego. And kids seem to like these shows even if they don't care for the toys; my nephews and nieces loved the Lego Ninja cartoons but they never asked for them on their christmas lists, they always wanted Lego from the 'generic' or Technic range or other toys. The shows that I've seen don't push the toys onto kids

  • Currently, the average hour of television contains 14.25 minutes of commercials, or about 24% of airtime.

    BBC America is working hard to increase that percentage, judging by the obnoxious amount of commercials in the broadcasts of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency.

  • My kids had watched maybe 10 commercials by the time they were 8. We just made sure we showed them ad-free kids channels and videos we had purchased.

  • I have never seen a "good" commercial for children.

    These commercials create a sense of want where there should be none to start with. Kids aren't *insert new toy* deficient, as they think they are, after seeing a commercial for what they don't have. All this does is create tension where there should be none to start with.

    --
    My little pony and me -- Little girl from My Little Pony commercial

  • Netflix households are also YouTube households, which bring the ads back.

  • I find it sad that busy bodies decided to defend children by making it so bothersome for broadcast channels to show fun kids shows that none of them exist on broadcast channels anymore.

  • I mean, how will these kids know what products they need if they can't watch commercials?

  • Watch PBS kids, it's better for you (Score:3, Insightful)

    by maybe111 ( 4811467 ) on Thursday December 21, 2017 @07:37PM (#55786513)

    It's free with an antenna and there isn't really any ads ... and there is cartoons 24/7... and it is usually educational.

    • If you just watch PBS, you miss the ads on commercial TV, which is usually the best part. It's like the Super Bowl.

  • and a bunch of other children's television folks campaigned against child advertising in the 70s. Fat lot of good it did. Still, I'm not sure this new world of no commercials will last. As I recall Cable TV didn't have commercials at the start...

  • LEGO (Score:2)

    by jemmyw ( 624065 )
    That'll be why LEGO has branched out into TV shows. Extremely clever move, they got the timing just right.
  • is when you screen commercials from your environment, and then end up somewhere where you can't avoid it, it's astounding how incredibly annoying they are-- like standing without earplugs next to someone operating a jackhammer... Makes a ready reminder as to why you were avoiding them in the first place.

  • If you consider children sleep about 10 hours per night, then 230 hours represents 5% of their waking time. If you instead look at their 'available time' which is not locked up in school etc, that number increases to over 10%.

    Spending 10% of children's time watching commercials during the formative period of their life when they learn at the most accelerated pace, they learn motor-, social and mental skills which are key for later life, as well as having their personality 'set', is incredibly wasteful.

  • That should come as no surprise. TV Series made by Netflix go for an hour per episode, those made by cable TV companies go for about 45min.

  • Now we just need to save kids from the actual programs, many of which are absolutely awful and/or commercials in themselves.

  • It's not clear to me how the article for this story or any of the articles the story links to accounts for ads that are a part of the show. I'm guessing the claim of "being saved" from advertising is flatly not true because the alleged surveying doesn't account for these ads.

    I also question the veracity of the nameless source who allegedly said "Netflix is a godsend. We try to prevent our kids from watching too much TV, but we love being able to put them in front of a Netflix show and know weâ(TM)re mo

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