• originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com
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    9 months ago

    recently cited that 40 percent of all new sign-ups opt for ads

    yeah no, sorry. thats not an endorsement that people prefer ads, thats a testament to people being fucking broke. thanks for making their lives just a little but shittier though.

    • arglebargle@lemm.ee
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      9 months ago

      But if they are broke, why are they paying for TV? The last thing I would do is pay for streaming when money was tightā€¦

      I get your point to a degree, but come on, they are saying it simply isnā€™t worth it. 3 streaming services with ads is better than 1 without or something like that.

      I mean there are a large number of free services with ads, so that has to be what they are thinking.

      • Goodtoknow@lemmy.ca
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        9 months ago

        People still want leisure in their life and thatā€™s cheaper than most other forms of leisure. Just because someoneā€™s broke doesnā€™t mean they will inherently not want easy access to entertainment.

        • arglebargle@lemm.ee
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          9 months ago

          Like I said there are a lot of free streaming services with ads, no need to pay for them.

          And frankly there is a lot of leisure to be had that is not paying a streaming bill.

          Donā€™t get me wrong, i simply will not pay for ads, so it is principle with me. But apparently some people are happy with both.

      • navi@lemmy.tespia.org
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        9 months ago

        Itā€™s a money grab. Our Netflix plan price didnā€™t change, but they added ads. I can pay extra to get the same service I used to get.

        They are just greedy for money and actively make the product worse instead of better. What better way than to encourage piracy.

        • arglebargle@lemm.ee
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          9 months ago

          netflix money grab

          I agree with you. That is what businesses do. So I dump em. Years ago, maybe 2014 I received a Hulu subscription in payment for something I was selling. I started using it, and there were ads! To this day I will not pay for, or even watch for free, Hulu. It is principle with me.

          But apparently I am alone on this. I got downvoted massively for saying it looks like people WILL still pay for ads, even if they can barely afford it. That I cannot understand. I wont do it if I can afford it, and I certainly wouldnt do it I could barely afford it. So the businesses win and keep scraping for more revenue.

          With hundreds of free (and legal) options with commercials, why the hell would anyone pay for video streaming if they are giving you ads anyways?

  • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
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    9 months ago

    So creatives arenā€™t happy. Customers arenā€™t happy. Broadcasters seem happy.

    End-stage enshittification confirmed?

  • ME5SENGER_24@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    I canceled cable service for 2 reasons: 1) commercials 2) watching 4 channels and paying for 100

    Now with streaming, commercials are back and Im finding it harder and harder to locate decent things to watch.

    Not sure where to turn next

  • jordanlund@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    What I want to know is how much money could insurance companies (cough, Liberty Mutual, cough) POSSIBLY be saving people when they are buying ads on every video on Youtube.

    • ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      I donā€™t know why but those Liberty Mutual commercials go in one ear and right out the other for me. I have YouTube Red so donā€™t know those but they sponsor live sports like crazy and one game this year, I was like, ā€œWhatā€™s that emu about?ā€ And my friend said, ā€œDude, theyā€™ve been showing the emu commercials non-stop for like 5 years.ā€

      I just googled it and they debuted the ā€œLiMu Emu and Dougā€ campaign in 2019. So, it was 4 years before I noticed the emu. Itā€™s good I can ignore ads but I would have definitely died in The Emu Wars.

    • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
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      9 months ago

      I wish I could see a liberty ad.

      The only crap I see is ā€œbefore you buy something on Amazon, see thisā€ garbage.

  • freamon@endlesstalk.org
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    9 months ago

    Itā€™s guaranteed to be worse: TV episodes are completely structured around whether the creators expect ads, and where in the runtime the ad will be (so they can resolve or tease a plot point before them).

    The addition of ads, or having more ad breaks than the original transmitter of a show had, will break the structure.

    And then of course thereā€™s the ā€˜Spotify questionā€™: are these ads genuinely supporting a subscription, or are they there to annoy you into paying for one by disrupting the flow of an episode as much as possible?

  • xyzzy@lemm.ee
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    9 months ago

    Welp, Paramount Plus has the Super Bowl and then Halo S2, which looks like it might be worth watching. After that it goes on the canceled pile with Netflix and ā€œMax.ā€

    I only have Hulu and Disney Plus at this point because theyā€™re bundled with my phone plan, and Prime because of Amazon. I have Apple TV+ during MLS season.

    But otherwise Iā€™ll just stick to my Blu-ray collection and sign up for Netflix ad-free or whatever for two months every two years and binge everything worth watching. My backlog is long enough to last me years at this point.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    9 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    After a swift click on ā€œnot now,ā€ this viewer cued up one of the more successful titles currently gracing Amazonā€™s roster ā€” the second season of beefcake vigilante drama Reacher.

    Interruptions, which included a spot for another series (Hudson & Rex, starring a German Shepherd detective) and a reminder from the folks at Intuit Turbotax that filling season has commenced, were indeed limited.

    ā€œWe fought so hard to get rid of commercials,ā€ says Alan Poul, executive producer and director of Max original Tokyo Vice which returns for a second season on Feb. 8.

    Paramount expands its own ad-supported tier internationally later in 2024 ā€” and though no official plans have been announced, recent hires at Apple TV+ suggest the tech behemoth will eventually introduce ads as well.

    David E. Kelley, the one-time broadcast golden boy who gave audiences Picket Fences, Chicago Hope and Ally McBeal before pivoting to premiere outlets like HBO (Big Little Lies) and Netflix (The Lincoln Lawyer), seems similarly disenchanted.

    Netflix, which recently cited that 40 percent of all new sign-ups opt for ads, announced the ā€œretirementā€ of its least expensive commercial-free tier in the coming second quarter.


    The original article contains 1,205 words, the summary contains 191 words. Saved 84%. Iā€™m a bot and Iā€™m open source!

  • realcaseyrollins@narwhal.city
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    9 months ago

    Where did yā€™all think the extra money to comply with SAG-AFTRA and the WGAā€™s demandsā€™ was gonna come from? Subscription revenue is not elastic relative to the content viewed, so that residual money has to come from somewhere.

    • ZeroCool@slrpnk.netOP
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      9 months ago

      Commercial tiers on streaming services predate the terms of the new SAG-AFTRA and WGA deals but nice try blaming unions for corporate greed.

        • ZeroCool@slrpnk.netOP
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          9 months ago

          Then maybe you should stop trying to blame corporate greed on union workers.

          • realcaseyrollins@narwhal.city
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            9 months ago

            I never did in the first place. This is 50% the fault of corporate greed and 50% the fault of a business model that isnā€™t designed to reap funds in the same way that both broadcast and cable television did.

            Anyone who thought that these companies would dig into their existing income and margins, especially when these streaming platforms were already mostly in the red, rather than find an income stream that more linearly aligned with the residuals they now must pay was optimistically naive.

            • ZeroCool@slrpnk.netOP
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              9 months ago

              I never did in the first place.

              Yes, you did. YOU brought up the cost of the SAG-AFTRA and WGA deals in an attempt to justify the need for commercial plans.

              Where did yā€™all think the extra money to comply with SAG-AFTRA and the WGAā€™s demandsā€™ was gonna come from?

              Right there. You said it. So stop this poor attempt at gaslighting. Nobody here is as stupid as you seem to think we are.

              • realcaseyrollins@narwhal.city
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                9 months ago

                At this point Iā€™m starting to think you just donā€™t understand revenue streams and business models so discussing this with you further doesnā€™t sound like something that will be productive, unfortunately.

                • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
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                  9 months ago

                  This from the guy who canā€™t remember what he wrote, nor can he scroll up.

                  You fell off the high horse a ways back. Pay attention.

    • CanadianCorhen@lemmy.ca
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      9 months ago

      yea, its not like Netflix made $33.7 billion U.S. dollars, with $5.5 billion of pure profit in 2023 aloneā€¦

      • realcaseyrollins@narwhal.city
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        9 months ago

        If ten million more people stream The Crown tomorrow using ad-free Netflix plans, where is the residual money for those ten million additional streams supposed to come from?

        • CanadianCorhen@lemmy.ca
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          9 months ago

          iā€¦ honestly donā€™t know what you mean? If 10 million people stream the crown tomorrow, every one of them is already paying for a membership, so i suggest you take the money from the monthly fee they already pay.

          Maybe Netflix brings home only $5b of profitā€¦ poor poor billionaires.

          • realcaseyrollins@narwhal.city
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            9 months ago

            Thatā€™s not profit, but income.

            But in any case, this is still a problem, as if any show gets popular enough, Netflix could theoretically owe more in residuals than theyā€™re making in monthly subscriptions. Ads are the only way to ensure that the people working on the projects can get paid what theyā€™re owed when we watch the media they made.

            Look I donā€™t like ads as much as the next guy, but when it comes to making revenue for people working on the shows and movies I watch, there are only two ways to guarantee that those workers get paid: if advertisers cover the residual fees with ads, as theyā€™ve done for decades now, or through margins of either physical or digital media sales. I love physical media but Iā€™ll happily watch ads on shows because it means that the people who made them are getting paid.

            TL;DR for any of this to truly work and for the actors, writers, and others to get paid their due, the money needs to come from an income source that generates more revenue when more people consume to media; otherwise, the companies offering these services could theoretically run out of money to pay residual fees.

            • CanadianCorhen@lemmy.ca
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              9 months ago

              i agree that everone needs to get paid, but we could say the same thing about an ad supported model, until its 6 hours ads for every hour of show ā€œbut what ifā€.

              In the end, they are making $5b of net profit (and $12.93b of gross profit), so their profit/liabilities is an extremely healthy 40%!). the increased profits isnt about paying people more, its about increasing their net profit for their shareholders.

              • realcaseyrollins@narwhal.city
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                9 months ago

                I agree to a point. While youā€™re right that the profit/liabilities margin is healthy, and that driving people into ad-supported tiers by raising the cost of ad-free viewing is mostly to keep these companies from having to pay out of existing income streams in order to keep profits as high as possible (even if theyā€™re still negative at the moment), I think itā€™s still worth considering that there is a potential for ad free viewing to cause a company to owe more in residuals than they make in subscription revenue if, for example, a ridiculous amount of people stream something for whatever reason.

                • realcaseyrollins@narwhal.city
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                  9 months ago

                  (BTW when Iā€™m referring to net income being ā€œstill negativeā€ Iā€™m talking about the streaming services, not the companies that own them)