Netflix 'Would Lose 57 Percent of Their Subscribers If They Added Commercials' (netimperative.com) 287
According to new research from marketing technology firm Audience Project, the majority (57%) of UK customers would stop watching Netflix if commercials were introduced, and even lowering subscriptions would cause a significant drop off of 42%. Here are some of the other key findings: - In the UK, Netflix takes the lion's share of the streaming audience at 70%, followed by BBC iPlayer (61%). Interestingly, YouTube, ITV Player and All4, all of which host ads, saw a decline.
- TV is still the preferred streaming device in the UK used by 42% of respondents.
- Streaming is on the rise particularly amongst the young, with almost as many 15-25 year olds streaming/downloading (63%) as watching traditional TV (65%) "This is proof, if it were needed, that Netflix is right to focus on growing through its investment in content rather than considering hosting advertising any time soon," Netimperative reports.
Martyn Bentley, Commercial Director UK at Audience Project, comments: "Our findings highlight the growing importance of targeting and relevance in advertising. As consumers have increasing choice over whether or not they see ads, both broadcasters and advertisers alike need to work hard to ensure that campaigns enhance experience, rather than detract -- plus it suggests that greater inroads need to be made with Connected TV as a means to help tailor advertising at a granular level."
- TV is still the preferred streaming device in the UK used by 42% of respondents.
- Streaming is on the rise particularly amongst the young, with almost as many 15-25 year olds streaming/downloading (63%) as watching traditional TV (65%) "This is proof, if it were needed, that Netflix is right to focus on growing through its investment in content rather than considering hosting advertising any time soon," Netimperative reports.
Martyn Bentley, Commercial Director UK at Audience Project, comments: "Our findings highlight the growing importance of targeting and relevance in advertising. As consumers have increasing choice over whether or not they see ads, both broadcasters and advertisers alike need to work hard to ensure that campaigns enhance experience, rather than detract -- plus it suggests that greater inroads need to be made with Connected TV as a means to help tailor advertising at a granular level."
Same with Youtube (Score:5, Funny)
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Red, nuff sed.
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Re:Same with Youtube (Score:5, Interesting)
It turns off ads on youtube for roughly $10/mo USD
We watch most of our evening news as clips on youtube, stuff like the late show with colbert, last week tonight, cnn, msnbc, fox news etc and specialty channels all have ads now when you watch a segment.
Also useful for playlists of music, as we use our TV as a youtube jukebox when pandora isn't cutting it.
Re:Same with Youtube (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Same with Youtube (Score:5, Interesting)
Besides, I prefer to pay for my content, especially if it's a more or less fair deal: get ads, or pay a reasonable fee to get rid of them. As soon as YouTube offered Red (or whatever they call it these days) in my country, I subscribed. We watch a fair amount of stuff on it.
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NoScript and AdBlock get rid of the ads for free, just sayin'.
So how does that help against the blatant product placement in Netflix shows?
Re:Same with Youtube (Score:5, Interesting)
In all honesty, I don't even mind the unskippable ones in theory because they are usually very short (or at least can be skipped after a few seconds).
What I truly hate is when they are inserted into the middle of a stream where someone is right in the middle of speaking or what have you. While such breaks are, thankfully, very short, they still completely interrupt the flow of whatever one was watching, to such an extent that I sometimes have to skip back a few seconds right after the commercial and rewatch that part of the video (which doesn't replay the commercial, thankfully).
To be honest, I believe that if Youtube really wants to insist on ads like this being in a video, they should ask the uploader to ensure that there are scene cuts or otherwise suitable places in the video to insert commercials, and youtube can ask where the timing of such spots are when the video is uploaded. If an uploader cannot provide satisfactory locations for commercials to youtube, then the entire video should be blocked from being able to be watched for free until the uploader has modified it to be amenable to this process. Of course, the uploader should be advised that this is the case, as well.
Yes, I'm quite aware of how user-hostile this solution is... that is a design feature, not a bug... because IMV, it is still less hostile than inserting commercials right smack dab in the middle of people saying a sentence.... almost EVERY SINGLE FUCKING TIME.
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In all honesty, I don't even mind the unskippable ones in theory because they are usually very short (or at least can be skipped after a few seconds).
What I truly hate is when they are inserted into the middle of a stream where someone is right in the middle of speaking or what have you. While such breaks are, thankfully, very short, they still completely interrupt the flow of whatever one was watching, to such an extent that I sometimes have to skip back a few seconds right after the commercial and rewatch that part of the video (which doesn't replay the commercial, thankfully).
To be honest, I believe that if Youtube really wants to insist on ads like this being in a video, they should ask the uploader to ensure that there are scene cuts or otherwise suitable places in the video to insert commercials, and youtube can ask where the timing of such spots are when the video is uploaded. If an uploader cannot provide satisfactory locations for commercials to youtube, then the entire video should be blocked from being able to be watched for free until the uploader has modified it to be amenable to this process. Of course, the uploader should be advised that this is the case, as well.
Yes, I'm quite aware of how user-hostile this solution is... that is a design feature, not a bug... because IMV, it is still less hostile than inserting commercials right smack dab in the middle of people saying a sentence.... almost EVERY SINGLE FUCKING TIME.
I'm an ex-Googler, and what bugs me about this is that Google is the company that claims they are so amazing at machine learning and they can make all the things lovely. They can create natural-sounding assistants to call and schedule a haircut, or suggest responses for emails, etc, but ... they can't even figure out where the damned conceptual/scene pauses are in a video? Really?
Honestly, sometimes I almost feel like they actually did write code to figure out the right thing to do, and then programmed it
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Have a day job like the rest of us?
I actually support 3 YouTubers financially. But the thousands of channels that list some random TOP 5s that will BLOW YOUR MIND, the impossible amount of people who play video games and want you to watch it and the assholes that reup someone else's content, just with 20 ads cut into a 5 minute video?
Good riddance. The world is a better place without them.
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How come it's only $10 in the US, but in the UK it's $15.64?!
If Google was a little more fair I might be tempted. This is just a total rip-off.
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Wait, wut?
You watch both msnbc and fox?
Don't you know that you can only join one mob?
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Re:Same with Youtube (Score:5, Informative)
Well, Ad Block stops 100% of Youtube ads for me, so I never even knew Youtube had ads until I started watching it via television instead. Since Youtube started on the computer I suspect most users who have ad block are fine with it, and those without ad blockers may find that other web sites are far more annoying with ads.
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I was the same way except my first encounter with a YouTube ad was on the phone... shortly after I found modifying DNS worked wonders since I am on WiFI 95% of the time anyways.
Re:Same with Youtube (Score:5, Interesting)
If they offered a reasonable ad-free option I'd take it. But $12/month is ridiculous. Way more that Netflix, for a start, and even if I cared about their premium content I wouldn't pay that much for it.
It seems to be because you get ad-free music, but I don't want that.
Give me ad-free normal YouTube for $2/month and I'm in. Otherwise I'm sticking with ad blocking.
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Obviously you've never used an ad blocker on YouTube, because I concur with the above poster. I don't have any ads on my YouTube.
Not even the ads inserted into content? I would love see an ad-blocker block those. Almost all the regular updated streams have switched to in-content ads, because they didn't get enough money from the regular ads.
Re:Same with Youtube (Score:5, Insightful)
Some times I watch Youtube on my phone where I don't have an adblocker (maybe should get one). And it is unbearable. I end up watching no more than a couple of videos before doing something else.
Re:Same with Youtube (Score:5, Interesting)
On Android you can use the open source Newpipe app for ad-free YouTube, or a hacked official YouTube app.
Unfortunately it's become impossible to block YouTube ads on smart TVs because they changed the way that the ads are served. They now come from the same domains as the actual content, and there are thousands of them, and even if you manage to block them it just causes the app to hang as it rotates through domains looking for one that works. A PiHole or similar is no longer effective.
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Re: Same with Youtube (Score:2)
thanks for the tip. I'll check it out!
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innacurate estimate (Score:4, Funny)
it's not 57% it's 56.732%. Let's keep this discussion rooted in reality people.
They missed the interesting question (Score:5, Insightful)
The interesting question is not whether a large portion of their existing subscribers would bail with commercials. That goes without saying. Even if they cut the price massively, one of the major reasons for paying for Netflix is the ability to get good content without commercials, and they know this.
Rather, the interesting questions is whether a lower-cost or free ad-subsidized tier would bring in enough additional subscribers to offset the loss from subscribers in the ad-free tier switching to that ad-subsidized tier.
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Maybe limit the ad-subsidized tier to a lower resolution?
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Reality corporate douche bag creep. Once they do ads they will creap them up to the highest tier no matter what, because psychopath executives and bullshit spreadsheets. Introduce ads and I am gone, done and finished, never look back, regardless of tiering bullshit because it is inevitable that advertisers will, scream and scream and scream at Netflix to allow them to scream and scream and scream at us. As for youtube ads, well, want to not sell me something try to force me to watch an ad for it and I guara
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Also: this is a UK survey. British people are accustomed to watching TV without ads, so it seems likely that a larger portion of them would ditch Netflix under that circumstance than people would in the United States, for example.
On the other hand, Netflix loses more than just revenue if they lose such a
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Also: this is a UK survey. British people are accustomed to watching TV without ads, so it seems likely that a larger portion of them would ditch Netflix under that circumstance than people would in the United States, for example.
I'm not so sure, it could work the other way round too. Like, in my country we have public TV and ads. Since i dislike ads, this was a reason to cut the cable a long time ago. Netflix is a welcome alternative.
However, if our public channels were to be ad-free, the incentive to subscribe to Netflix would be a lot lower. One could imagine that in our country the number of Netflix subscribers that dislike ads, and have a Netflix subscription just because of that, might actually be higher than in the UK.
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Not really. It's only the BBC channels that do not carry ads. Most (if not all) OTA channels carry ads. So you can often watch programs that would go out ad-free in the USA through a service like Showtime, with ads on Channel4.
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No they won't. Because it goes against their existing business model for content.
You have to remember, Netflix makes content to attract subscribers. They look at the demographics of their subscriber base and figure out what kind of programming they'd like, then make that content so they'd
Re:They missed the interesting question (Score:5, Interesting)
Meh. The ability to track viewership really does not concern most people. In fact, most people understand that the ability to track viewership is important for ensuring that people can actually get the kinds of content that they like. After all, if nobody knows whether anybody is watching a particular type of show, what's the incentive to continue producing that type of show over some other type of show? And the more expensive the show is to produce, the more important it is to know that there are a lot of people watching to make it worth spending the money, so for things like sci-fi, tracking is absolutely critical.
Mind you, it would be nice to have an incognito mode in Netflix, for when you don't want something to affect your rankings because you think it might suck, but I have a separate profile for that. Beyond that, though, I'm pretty sure the only people who really care about avoiding tracking are watching porn. :-)
Re:They missed the interesting question (Score:5, Interesting)
the ability to track viewership is important for ensuring that people can actually get the kinds of content that they like
I have never seen this mysterious feature to work in any way whatsoever for me on any site. Not even remotely. Amazon keeps pestering me with suggestions for things I've bought half a year ago, Youtube suggests videos I would never watch in my life and even if I click away all suggestions it will start with the same nonsense again after a while, and Netflix suggests the most awful and horrible movies on earth, because they have only like a few dozen movies in my country anyway and I've all the good ones ten years ago. Even their series suggestions are complete nonsense, merely based on what's new in their catalogue.
Growing importance? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the findings highlight the fact that consumers don't want advertising. Anyone other than a marketing droid would see this as declining importance of ads. Talk about cognitive dissonnance.
Re:Growing importance? (Score:5, Insightful)
Copied and pasted exactly the above quote to say just what you did.
Advertising people are special. I've known a couple, very nice people, in terrible jobs. The stories they tell themselves to justify what they do. Most of the ones I've known have eventually gotten out. And their story changes when they do.
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I don't think there's anything fundamentally wrong with what they do. They provide something of benefit to their clients, and fund something that the people watching the ads actually wants. sure, most of us would clearly rather pay money, but its only recently we've had
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"They provide something of benefit to their clients"
Sometimes. Sometimes they don't. Sometimes they actually do harm, like when they make commercials that offend existing customers, or prospective ones.
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I think there is such a thing as ethical advertising, but it's not usually what's practiced. Ad people's job is to use psychological manipulation to part the most people with the most money, as efficiently as possible. Otherwise advertising would be a little note once in a while "hey, we made this, give it a try if you think it's something you'd like."
To be clear, it's not the ad people's fault. Advertising has been optimized by competition, exactly as market capitalism is supposed to do. Unfortunately it's
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To be clear, it's not the ad people's fault. Advertising has been optimized by competition, exactly as market capitalism is supposed to do. Unfortunately it's a sector where the optimal solution is exploiting people.
But if adblocking is any indicator, the optimization has reached the point of regression.
I pay for NetFlix. I simply won't pay for it if I'm paying for ads.
Aside from the annoying repetitious nature and the massive cutting of movies and even television shows that sometimes lose important parts of the movie or lose funny moments deemed too racy or something, it's jarring.
We live in a funny world where a scat or pee joke in a movie might be censored and the spot filled with an ad for the new sexualiz
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We can hope. I've been predicting a massive scaling back on advertising for years, but it hasn't happened yet. I don't think advertising is anywhere near as effective as the money that's spent on it. Not just directly, but through things like the valuation of advertising platforms... I mean social media companies.
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We can hope. I've been predicting a massive scaling back on advertising for years, but it hasn't happened yet. I don't think advertising is anywhere near as effective as the money that's spent on it. Not just directly, but through things like the valuation of advertising platforms... I mean social media companies.
I listened to a sports show on ESPN in the mornings. It's pretty popular, if pretty goofy. But it has reached the point where 50 percent of the show is outside advertising, and there is about a minute of inline advertising during the beginning and end of each segment.
So now, the actual show is just supporting the advertising. six 5 minute segments, with the addition of 12 minutes inline makes for 42 minutes of ads and 18 minutes of programming. The end game of advertising metastasis? Well, that just i
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Oh and here I am without mod points...
I would pay double what they are asking before I would continue to subscribe to a service with ads. I can't describe how much I hate them -- enough that I have never paid for "cable" or even watched over-the-air television. I've been waiting for ad-free over-the-top services my whole life.
Re:Growing importance? (Score:5, Interesting)
This raises the question of what's going to happen to video ads once broadcast TV goes away. If everyone's watching commercial-free services like Netflix, then where are people going to see these things? Are advertisers just going to rely on other types of ads, like on web pages? Print is dying as fast, although some audio streaming services have audio ads. Maybe it'll move to sponsorships, with the content producer talking about the product or having product placement.
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Shows will continue to have more and more product placement. When you see a character on screen there will be a link that lets you buy their entire outfit, everything in their house and the car they rode in on.
Also you are going to need ad-blocking glasses when you go outside. And earplugs.
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Maybe it'll move to sponsorships, with the content producer talking about the product or having product placement.
You mean like they already do on Netflix? Bought any Eggo recently without realizing why? Watched "Love" and felt the urge to take an Uber over competing services?
Re:Growing importance? (Score:4, Insightful)
False dichotomy. The comparison here isn't ads vs no ads. If you compare those two scenarios, of course nobody wants ads.
The correct relevant comparison is no ads but a higher cost, vs lower cost (or no cost) but with ads. And although I hate ads and am willing to pay to avoid them, the vast majority of people seem to disagree with me. They vote with their pocketbooks for lower cost with more ads.
Count me among them. (Score:4, Interesting)
I refuse to pay twice. That's why I have never given Hulu a cent. I don't care how great the shows are, or how much my kids will kick and scream.
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You know that hulu has an adfree tier, right? I think it's$4/mo more
Re:Count me among them. (Score:4, Informative)
Yes. And back in the day they had a free ad-supported tier. But they pulled that away, made it a pay service, but still showed ads. That soured me on them. I could pay for ad-free, but just don't trust that they won't pull a bait and switch.
Re: Count me among them. (Score:2, Insightful)
And then you would just cancel? How much of a commitment are we talking about here?
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GP doesn't know this, because it's not true. Hulu only has a reduced-ad tier. It's not ad-free.
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...and why Amazon is playing a dangerous game. They're starting to put a few ads onto Prime Video, and they annoy the hell out of me (not least because they get in the way of the viewing, but most of all - because I've already paid for Prime). Worse still, they put ads on stuff that's on there and Netflix - they even show it in the search results. I'm now trying to avoid clicking the Amazon rendition of anything that has a Netflix alternative.
100% of Attention (Score:5, Insightful)
They lose 100% of my attention when ads are on anyway.
Step 1. Mute.
Step 2. Look away or look at another device.
Step 3. (Optional) Consider how I could acquire the same content with no ads, any means necessary.
Re:100% of Attention (Score:5, Interesting)
Back in the old days of television, commercial breaks were prime time for “potty breaks”. During hugely popular shows (e.g. Roots or the Super Bowl), there were anecdotes about large old apartment buildings having their plumbing fail because too many people flushed at the same time.
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In power generation planning terms, this is still a thing. Over here (UK,) there's a known phenomenon where the national grid fires up extra capacity roundabout the approximate times of the main ad breaks of certain soap operas in an evening (on commercial TV, we get fewer ad breaks in general than, say, the US, so this is a more predictable thing), because of so many people getting up to put electric kettles on to make a hot drink during the break (cooker-top kettles being the exception rather than the rul
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They lose 100% of my attention when ads are on anyway.
Step 1. Mute.
Step 2. Look away or look at another device.
Step 3. (Optional) Consider how I could acquire the same content with no ads, any means necessary.
And tivo kindly implemented skip the adds feature to many shows (not sure if other DVRs have this). Strangely, I'm buying no less goods from advertisements when using skip.
I'd think it'd eventually be 100% (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'd think it'd eventually be 100% (Score:5, Insightful)
This is how HBO/et.al. started: ...and then there were a few ads for a few HBO shows. Ok, we can accept that...sorta like movie trailers. And then you had "This show presented by Proctor & Gambel", but that was just at the start and end, and we said..."ok, that doesn't hurt much"... ...and shortly after that, the frog was boiled.
q. People said "Why would i want to PAY for a TV channel when I can watch it for free?"
a. Well, exclusive content and no ads.
PS: from an old rant: "Who needs all these channels? Who the heck is going to watch a channel about the WEATHER?"
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Netflix would lose a lot of subscribers but not all of them would leave.
Look at all the people (tens of millions) who pay for cable television and put up with ads. There are also millions who pay for Hulu and are shown ads.
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The same could be said about Cable TV. Cable TV was introduced as a paid service without ads. Look how that turned out.
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Cable TV was introduced as a paid service without ads.
That is simply untrue.
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They see people paying hundreds of dollars for cable TV which has a hell of a lot of advertising.
That reveals a lot about how most people think of these services. They hate ads, but they want the content and the deal has to be a lot shittier than just pay+ads to put them off.
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I treat Netflix like I treat YouTube; I only use it to watch the actual content, not browse the library.
Netflix is horrible at presenting their library and the interface is crap.
I can highly recommend https://www.justwatch.com/ [justwatch.com] instead.
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Remember that cable started out as an ad-free alternative to free to air.
I've heard that a few times in a few threads here, and it simply is not true. Cable rebroadcasts existing content, commercials and all. That has been the case since its inception in ~1949. If a particular content provider does not have commercials (PBS, HBO, etc), only then would it be commercial free.
ITV Player and All4 (Score:2)
Shock. Perhaps it has something to do with the ITV player hosting almost no programs that are not either 1. "Reality TV" 2. Old or 3. Very old. As for Ch4, they have turned their Roku interface to sh*t. Much more difficult to find anything now. I can only think that the people who design the UI never actually use it themselves.
Subscription killed the video star (Score:3)
This makes me wonder if advertising, on video media, runs a risk of dying out.
Youtube is now offering an ad free subscription.
If NetFlix has such a large chunk of the viewing population then where can you get your product videos into eye balls?
Facebook? Not everyone uses it and you can ignore most things there.
How long until Facebook offers an ad free subscription or does it capitalise on the other channels shutting up shop?
It's not like NetFlix customers don't have an alternative as an en masse return to piracy could be one public backlash,
A balance must be maintained.
This is an interesting study as it raises a lot of questions about the future of screen viewing and advertising's place in it - if at all.
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For everything produced, here are a series of questions that must be decided:
1. Who's going to pay for it?
2. goto 1
Hulu? (Score:2)
Reminds me of when I signed up for a trial week of Hulu, not knowing anything about it other than that it was a competitor to NetFlix. First day, when I saw a commercial in the the middle of a show, my jaw dropped nearly to the floor. I didn't need the next six days to try it out. Cancelled it on the first day during the trial period.
If I'm paying for a service, I'd expect it to not have any commercials. Like another poster said above, I wouldn't even use the service if they paid me $5 or $10 per month.
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They already have ads. (Score:2)
Just another unicorn waiting to die (Score:2)
Netflix have what you or I would be told is not a business model if we went to the bank: sell everything you have at a loss. Same as Uber, the only way it works is if you drive everyone else out of business before you run out of cash. That's just not going to happen.
So, obviously, they need to find some way of making this pay and if advertising is their answer then instantly they become old media delivered over new pipes.
I'm sure none of the people who were in at the ground floor care about any of this; the
Market Saturation... (Score:2)
Netflix has seen incredible growth, likely a lot of it from signing on new clients. But the problem is, they have allowed the stock market to believe that this sort of growth is sustainable, when everything we know about markets tells us that this isn't possible. So it's possible that this is Netflix floating the idea to see how people react, for example by analyzing trend
Enhance rather than detract? (Score:3)
How the hell does advertising enhance programming? It always detracts.
iPlayer vs. ITV Hub (Score:2)
With iPlayer I have a reasonably good choice of TV series that I can download at home with a good internet connection and watch on the train for free, and movies can usually be downloaded for a week.
Being advert free is nice, but other factors are much
You bet (Score:2)
Only 57% ? -- They could better tier pricing. (Score:2)
Just the mixing of included with Prime and "buy now" on Amazon is highly detracting to me on Prime. I left cable to escape the constant barrage of brain damaging commercials. Netflix is the only refuge. Even DVD's sometimes have commercials.
Netflix's big price hikes are also a bad way to go. They could, instead, add a broader mix of titles for higher prices. That would earn them more money without pissing off their existing customers. It's really sad if they are thinking that the lack of commercial fr
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I'd go $2/month.
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Re:Lower tiers (Score:4, Funny)
I don't understand what all this hate is about commercials. Without them, I'd never have seen the Geiko Gekko story. And they brought back the Caveman episodes, gloriously spread across my 72" screen!
Regards,
your local insurance salesman
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My favorite commercials are those Lincoln ads with Matthew McConaughey, where he plays a man who is slowly going insane. Ever since I realized that's what was going on, I can see that's the only interpretation that makes sense.
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I don't understand what all this hate is about commercials. Without them, I'd never have seen the Geiko Gekko story. And they brought back the Caveman episodes, gloriously spread across my 72" screen!
Regards, your local insurance salesman
Don't forget catheter ads for men, and the sexualized adult diapers for women.
Or the mesothelioma lawyer fishing expeditions. Maybe if the ads weren't tending toward so damn gross?
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. . . if you watch about 4 hours of content, you'll wind up having to sit through about a hour of commercials if the streaming service uses the same ratio that television does.
Who says you have to sit there and watch the commercials?
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In the UK, commercial TV = free.
The BBC is accessed through the TV licence so it is pay-to-watch (about $16.50 per month) but has no commercials. The licence covers a household i.e. a house and its occupants regarded as a unit, regardless of size. It also covers the cost of BBC radio although you only need a licence if you are watching the TV.
So, the expectation of the consumer would be to provide Netflix for free with ads or for a fee without ads. It would be a bitter pill to swallow to pay for a se
Re:Lower tiers (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, you're absolutely right. If network television could thrive for decades by giving people free programming paid for via commercials, so can Netflix.
So forget it. Netflix. If you add commercials, it better be gratis.
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I used to subscribe to a film channel in the UK called FilmFour. They mainly showed independent, British and foreign cinema, not films made through Hollywood studios.
They stopped charging for subscription and started to include adverts to try and boost viewer numbers. I saved on my subscription and stopped watching.
I don't want adverts. I especially don't want adverts midway through a film. If Netflix start doing that I'll revert to film sources that let me watch a film, not watch a third of a film then com
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Re: Lower tiers (Score:5, Insightful)
When cable TV first came out one of the selling points was, you are paying up-front so there will be no commercials! Now you can watch maybe five minutes of cable TV without getting a commercial - and people are fleeing. One of the absolute best things about Netflix is the lack of commercials. They have already shown that people will in fact pay up front to avoid commercials. It will be too bad if they submit to the easy route and add commercials, dooming themselves to irrelevance.
Re: Lower tiers (Score:2, Informative)
+1 having commercials on a paid service is annoying... I will pay for content that is friendly to me, or I will tolerate commercials on a free service (within limits -- when it's too much I just close it), but I won't pay to see commercials.
They just have to decide how they make more profits. I don't have to be their customer, and I don't care which way they go. I think the headline is right though. If they add commercials and still charge me monthly, I'll cancel.
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Yep, let customers choose. YouTube does. Ad after (Score:2)
As you suggested, it definitely depends on how much. A five-second ad before the show, or at the end, is a lot different than a two-minute interruption in the middle of the show.
I'm sure a lot of people would rather pay less and have ads. The fact that most YouTube viewers choose ads over paying $10 is evidence of that. The cool thing about streaming vs broadcasting is that different viewers can have a different experience. Some can choose free with ads, others can choose to pay monthly. Different bitrates
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Netflix could create a lower priced tier with commercials. It could start at $5 a month for 1 concurrent stream for extremely price sensitive customers.
They'd be better off giving those users only a subset of content (no TV series or something). Netflix's brand is super-convenient no commercials, adding a commercial tier just kills their brand identity for a pittance of money.
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Netflix could create a lower priced tier with commercials. It could start at $5 a month for 1 concurrent stream for extremely price sensitive customers.
They can either charge or subscription or have ads. Mixing the two is a bad idea.
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I wonder what TV/radio/etc is like in those special places around the world where that is not common or allowed?
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I'd say the frequency at which there are commercial interruptions and the duration of them matter too.
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Not sure whether this varies by region, but Hulu has an ad-free option for $11.99/month.
I find it good value for money:
1) Saves time not having ads ... cliff-hanger before ad-break is resolved when show continues ~1 second later.
2) Saves frustration