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This comment from Reddit user SmegmataTheFirst really nails it: "tl;dr: Advertising ruins everything, which is why netflix originals are better than cable TV s

This comment from Reddit user SmegmataTheFirst really nails it: "tl;dr: Advertising ruins everything, which is why netflix originals are better than cable TV shows." https://np.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/5ou7px/netflixs_gamble_pays_off_as_subscriptions_soar/dcmczmz/ https://np.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/5ou7px/netflixs_...

Joeri 10y ago
Why are there ads on cable tv? Why can't they just charge tv subscribers the whole amount and get rid of ads on tv? If netflix can do it, why can't tv do the same?
- nerfhammer 10y ago
  Cable originally didn't have ads. They just discovered they could put ads in and nobody cancelled their subscriptions.
  - rchowe 10y ago
    This is actually a common myth. Cable initially was a service where the feed for certain terrestrial broadcast stations was transmitted over a cable for users who could not receive a clear signal. Since the same feed was used, it had the ads the broadcast affiliate put into it.
  - gozur88 10y ago
    The original microwave pay channels didn't have commercials. But cable always did.
  - sametmax 10y ago
    Which basically means it's the consummer fault again. I mean, yes, they are evil. But just like disease, it's useless to blame it. There will always be diseases. It's our responsibility to cure current ones and create environments to avoid future ones. Which means for businesses, if you want them to stop misbehave, you should stop rewarding them when they do. Just like in politics. Which amazingly we don't do.
    - HeavenBanned 10y ago
      Old habits die hard. Why cancel a cushy $10 Netflix subscription when 1 ad pops up every session? A year later Why cancel a cushy $12 Netflix subscription when 5 ads pop up every session? 5 years later Why cancel a cushy $20 Netflix subscription when 10 ads pop up every session? Do you see where this is going? Ad and subscription creep is a very real thing, and consumer will not "protest" because behaving is so easy when they betray your trust an inch at a time.
    - FatalBaboon 10y ago
      Especially in a capitalistic world, I believe this is paramount. Oh you don't like google and facebook eventually abusing what they know about you? Don't use their services.
      - sametmax 10y ago
        In a capitalistic world, the bank note is a vote bulletin. The only one that is always listened to, and that you can use every day, on every topic. And also the one they don't teach you about in school.
- matthuggins 10y ago
  They can, but they don't want to remove revenue streams when enough people are willing to pay for it.
  - josefresco 10y ago
    This. Why kill a revenue stream (from business), and piss off another stream (consumers) by raising prices?
- joezydeco 10y ago
  What does "the whole amount" mean? Think about what your local cable company charges for HBO. They have no advertising and programming is pretty good. Back in the day it was $20/month, now it's something close to $10/mo, right? What would your cable bill look like if every single channel was $10/month?
  - rossjudson 10y ago
    I just navigated through Apple's maze to cancel my HBO subscription. I realized that, after months had gone by, it just represented a crap value next to Netflix.
    - chime 10y ago
      I find HBO shows equal or better in quality than the best Netflix shows. Westworld was fantastic. My wife and I just started watching The Young Pope. In a few months GoT and SV will be back on. HBO is learning from Netflix and coming out with some fantastic shows. I also like catching recent movies on HBO before they show up on Netflix, Amazon Prime etc. Of course, Netflix is well worth the subscription and if you don't watch a lot of TV, it has enough content to keep you entertained for a while. But I've noticed that I discuss HBO shows more with my friends/family than Netflix ones.
      - nindalf 10y ago
        I live in a part of the world where the opposite is true. The Netflix catalogue of originals is there but apart from that its pretty weak. Not value for money at $8/mo. On the other hand there is a legit service that gives me the sports I'm interested in (minus basketball), all HBO shows and recent movies at $3/mo. I'm canceling my subscription to Netflix for now because I find I don't actually spend any time watching it.
        ghaff 10y ago
        Even in the US, Netflix is for watching their originals plus a pretty good back catalog of TV shows. If you're looking for anything else, it's a bonus if they happen to have it but you shouldn't really count on it. A former Netflix tech guy once told me that "People get Netflix for the movies and stay for the TV shows." Though that's probably less true than it used to be given Netflix Originals and a pretty wide recognition that their streaming movie catalog is limited. Today it's probably the Originals that drive the purchasing (as with HBO).
- tn13 10y ago
  Legacy and entrenched interests. Cable services have optimized their process to call and convert users instead of offering them something useful. TV is often bundled with internet and you are charged extra without you explictly asking for it.
- JoshTriplett 10y ago
  > Why can't they just charge tv subscribers the whole amount The secret is that there's no "whole amount", because that would imply the concept of "enough money". There's no such thing as "enough money". I mean that entirely non-sarcastically; to the extent it doesn't go to cover their costs, it goes to increase their profit, which has no upper bound. If they've found a way to extract more money, they'll do it. They question then becomes "to what extent have they found a larger revenue stream, and to what extent have they obtained more money now by alienating customers and driving them to other services".
  - Bombthecat 10y ago
    I expect from Netflix no less. As soon the growth phase is over. They will turn to ads.
    - thomasz 10y ago
      In that case, I'm dead sure that a lot of their customers will return to piracy.
      - hkmurakami 10y ago
        How many is a lot? If the proportion of revenue increase outweighs subscriber loss, it's still worth inserting ads.
        Freak_NL 10y ago
        Only if all competitors did the same. Unlike cable or terrestrial broadcast television, with Netflix the consumer has choice and can simply go to a competitor (this includes piracy). If Netflix starts experimenting with advertisements, they will give competitors a chance to move in on the subscribers that won't stand for it. Losing subscribers is fine if they don't go anywhere else (because they can't), but losing subscribers to a competitor is a risky move.
    - JoshTriplett 10y ago
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > Why are there ads on cable tv? To pay the bills. > Why can't they just charge tv subscribers the whole amount and get rid of ads on tv? That's what premium channels (HBO, Cinemax, etc.) do, and they appeal to a different audience than non-premium cable, because most people are more willing to accept the cost of advertising than the cost of paying for premium channels.
- daemin 10y ago
  In Australia when pay/cable TV first came in it was ad free, but then ads were slowly added to it, first just ads for content on the channel, but then normal ads came in. People were rightly angry about this because they thought that by paying for TV they could skip the ads. However it turned out that by paying for TV they were signaling to advertisers that they were better off (and willing to spend money for things) than regular free-to-air TV watching people, and therefore their eyeballs were worth more. So now pay/cable TV in Australia has more ads per hour than free to air TV.
- candiodari 10y ago
  https://ir.netflix.com/common/download/download.cfm?companyid=NFLX&fileid=924418&filekey=1AB3E1F3-4D15-43E2-AB25-330CAF92E993&filename=Consolidated_Balance_Sheet.xlsx https://ir.netflix.com/common/download/download.cfm?companyi... Look at the bottom line. Netflix lost 126 million dollars in 3 months. Revenue per user is negative and going down. Needless to say, this can't last. Either price more than doubles, or ads come.
  - dpark 10y ago
    I don't understand what you're reading that's different from what I'm reading. Where do you get this 126 million dollar loss? Netflix reported net income of $66.7MM for the quarter and $186.7MM for the year. [1] And how could revenue per user be negative? Even if Netflix were burning cash they wouldn't have negative revenue. [1 (xlsx)] http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/NFLX/3717249512x0x924401/FE69AB43-B923-4CAB-AB31-E538EC6BAE47/Earnings_Tables_1.17.16.xlsx http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/NFLX/3717249512x0x924...
coderdude 10y ago
There aren't any ads on Netflix to begin with so I don't think that comment really nails anything. The shows are just good.
tantanel 10y ago
Well, Netflix does have advertising in their originals, but it's much less in intrusive than the regular ad breaks. It comes in the form of product placement - characters preferring certain brands of beer, going to certain supermarkets, being fascinated by certain gadgets etc. House of Cards even had a warning about it at the beginning of the show, at least on Netflix UK. Personally I'm not too bothered by it as long as it's subtle, and so far it has been.
- sleepychu 10y ago
  Perhaps I'm just sensitive to it but the House of Cards placement in particular seemed really conspicuous to me. (Maybe especially because they just all had iPhones in the previous season and so there were lots of iPhone shots when they used their phones). But generally I find I notice the product placement spots because they seem out of the flow of the program, I guess they work best when the brand is more hands-off and lets the creator do it subtly.
  - tantanel 10y ago
    I think I would have noticed far less of the placements if it hadn't been for the "warning" before the episodes. :)
    - sleepychu 10y ago
      Amusingly I didn't notice the warning!
  - kyriakos 10y ago
    I don't even notice them and even if I had I wouldn't mind. I mean characters will use a phone in the series, the production might as well get something out of it. It becomes a problem when the plot is built around the product placement e.g its done a lot in modern family
    - DanBC 10y ago
      It was pretty heavy handed in some episodes of House of Cards. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGDgnp7-uck https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGDgnp7-uck
moomin 10y ago
Never mind advertising, look at how awful the interface is on Amazon to get an idea of why Netflix's content is crushing it. For instance, Transparent and Catastrophe are both Amazon Prime shows and are reportedly excellent. I have never seen the UI suggest I watch them. It's too busy suggesting I buy something. (Oh yeah, advertising...)
- ethbro 10y ago
  I only use the Amazon app on a slightly-old LG tv, but it's still pretty terrible. Slow, ugly, poor UX. Netflix on the same device is excellent.
- citizenkeen 10y ago
  Every time I use Amazon, I say "I wish this UI was half as good as Netflix's." Every time I use Hulu, I say "I wish this UI was half as good as Amazon's."
  - JBlue42 10y ago
    So much this. Netflix > Amazon > Hulu. For players: Amazon's interface is much better than it used to be when Prime TV firt began but it has a lot of gimmicks too that take time to understand. Hulu's still buffers or gets stuck on an ad or does something dumb. Finding stuff: Hulu isn't great for that and I hate my queue/watchlist. I think it was following in the footsteps of Netflix, switching to the big pictures, which I'm assuming is meant for swipe-y screens/tvs more so than the computer browser these days. The findability of items on Amazon is appalling, despite having a generally good selection. To actually browse, on Prime and Netflix at least, I use instantwatcher.com.
- lobster_johnson 10y ago
  I have an Apple TV, so to watch Amazon content I'm consigned to stream it from my phone using AirPlay. However, that works surprisingly well. And it has a bonus feature: While the episode is playing, you get annotations on the phone about what actors are on the screen and what music is playing, with the ability to click on them to get bios etc. (I'm sure this isn't offered on every show streaming on Prime; the last example I remember was Goliath.)
flurdy 10y ago
This a million. Hence why I only watch BBC IPlayer, Netflix and somewhat Amazon Prime. No ads. Also why I don't bother streaming from UK's other commercial channels e.g. ITV and Channel 4 as they are riddled with ads. And you have to log into them which is annoying, not helped by rubbish players especially on Linux. May also be that their programming is mostly irrelevant, e.g. reality show and singing contests etc. I do endure some ads when streaming sports channels. (Sky sports, BT Sports, Eurosport). But at least then they are limited to before and after the events.
- JumpCrisscross 10y ago
  > Hence why I only watch BBC IPlayer, Netflix and somewhat Amazon Prime. No ads. No third-party ads. Prime pre-roll advertises its shows in its own show.
  - flurdy 10y ago
    I am ok with that. It at least is somewhat relevant. And Im not really watching the screen yet, adjusting ear plugs etc.
  - alphonsegaston 10y ago
    This somehow never fails to anger me with HBO as well. Why are you interrupting a service I'm paying for to advertise...the service? They could just have a previews section in their apps and call it good.
- jon-wood 10y ago
  I've been doing TV via iPlayer, (formally) piracy, and now Amazon Prime and Netflix for about five years now. I can't stand watching TV with adverts now, I find it almost impossible to follow a TV show when the story is being interrupted every 15 minutes to bombard me with adverts for things I don't want, so I just don't bother starting.
  - ethbro 10y ago
    This, more than anything else, sums up why Netflix is doing so well. Viewers/subscribers are a zero sum game, as they're not growing as a total in places like the US. Traditional content was designed in a content-scarce environment (from the few broadcast channels, to a few more cable channels, to VHS, to DVD). That's not the world we live in anymore: now it's a time-scarce environment. There's more content (both legacy and new) than I could hope to consume, so I'm only interested in the best content for me. Traditional content providers aren't optimized for micro-targeting.
muse900 10y ago
I was paying sky in the UK around £70 a month. I tried to watch Friends on comedy central, which is 20 minutes per episode... each episode had 3 ad slots... 3!!! ad!!! slots... and I was paying £70 a month for that thing, they were trying to milk me out... I've quit sky and I don't miss it at all, and am very glad I quit it.
- KineticLensman 10y ago
  I've also abandoned Sky to a combination of BT (my broadband provider) and Amazon Prime on a Firestick. In my experience so far Amazon has much less pre-movie advertising and also doesn't interrupt movie end-credits with a very intrusive ad while you are still in the movie's 'zone', which really annoyed me. The downside is the top-up charges of a few quid over and above prime membership costs to get most good films and TV shows. But for the amount I watch TV, this is still affordable, and the overall range of content is much larger than sky, even if you have to pay extra sometimes.
dagw 10y ago
Personally I believe the pressure of reaching syndication and too long seasons ruins things as much as, if not more than, advertising.
Esau 10y ago
Agreed. I recently subscribed to Spotify and I love it.
Shivetya 10y ago
even that short spam fest of commercials prior to the show I wanted to watch on HBO's service was enough to make me cancel after the season ended. I simply didn't want to watch anything else they offered because of unskippable ad spam; its like those horrid DVD ads that some companies still have. Still, while some of their original content is good I am not subscribing to their service just for that, let alone I don't need six semi super hero shows. If they keep pairing down their catalog I am going to lose interest real fast
alistproducer2 10y ago
I'm going to have to agree. I recently cut the cord and now when I watch network TV (via my DTV tuner) commercials feel really jarring. One of the reasons I cut the cord and got off social media is I began to feel as though many of my thoughts were not my own anymore because I was subjecting myself to daily brainwashing . the further away from those services I get, the more abnormal they seem.
larrik 10y ago
The worst part of TV are the ads DURING the shows. Ads for other shows taking up a quarter of the screen, without regard for the what its blocking under it. Completely ridiculous.
draw_down 10y ago
Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM, and nobody ever got fired for talking bad about advertising on the internet.

Joeri 10y ago

Why are there ads on cable tv? Why can't they just charge tv subscribers the whole amount and get rid of ads on tv? If netflix can do it, why can't tv do the same?

nerfhammer 10y ago
Cable originally didn't have ads. They just discovered they could put ads in and nobody cancelled their subscriptions.
- rchowe 10y ago
  This is actually a common myth. Cable initially was a service where the feed for certain terrestrial broadcast stations was transmitted over a cable for users who could not receive a clear signal. Since the same feed was used, it had the ads the broadcast affiliate put into it.
- gozur88 10y ago
  The original microwave pay channels didn't have commercials. But cable always did.
- sametmax 10y ago
  Which basically means it's the consummer fault again. I mean, yes, they are evil. But just like disease, it's useless to blame it. There will always be diseases. It's our responsibility to cure current ones and create environments to avoid future ones. Which means for businesses, if you want them to stop misbehave, you should stop rewarding them when they do. Just like in politics. Which amazingly we don't do.
  - HeavenBanned 10y ago
    Old habits die hard. Why cancel a cushy $10 Netflix subscription when 1 ad pops up every session? A year later Why cancel a cushy $12 Netflix subscription when 5 ads pop up every session? 5 years later Why cancel a cushy $20 Netflix subscription when 10 ads pop up every session? Do you see where this is going? Ad and subscription creep is a very real thing, and consumer will not "protest" because behaving is so easy when they betray your trust an inch at a time.
  - FatalBaboon 10y ago
    Especially in a capitalistic world, I believe this is paramount. Oh you don't like google and facebook eventually abusing what they know about you? Don't use their services.
    - sametmax 10y ago
      In a capitalistic world, the bank note is a vote bulletin. The only one that is always listened to, and that you can use every day, on every topic. And also the one they don't teach you about in school.
matthuggins 10y ago
They can, but they don't want to remove revenue streams when enough people are willing to pay for it.
- josefresco 10y ago
  This. Why kill a revenue stream (from business), and piss off another stream (consumers) by raising prices?
joezydeco 10y ago
What does "the whole amount" mean? Think about what your local cable company charges for HBO. They have no advertising and programming is pretty good. Back in the day it was $20/month, now it's something close to $10/mo, right? What would your cable bill look like if every single channel was $10/month?
- rossjudson 10y ago
  I just navigated through Apple's maze to cancel my HBO subscription. I realized that, after months had gone by, it just represented a crap value next to Netflix.
  - chime 10y ago
    I find HBO shows equal or better in quality than the best Netflix shows. Westworld was fantastic. My wife and I just started watching The Young Pope. In a few months GoT and SV will be back on. HBO is learning from Netflix and coming out with some fantastic shows. I also like catching recent movies on HBO before they show up on Netflix, Amazon Prime etc. Of course, Netflix is well worth the subscription and if you don't watch a lot of TV, it has enough content to keep you entertained for a while. But I've noticed that I discuss HBO shows more with my friends/family than Netflix ones.
    - nindalf 10y ago
      I live in a part of the world where the opposite is true. The Netflix catalogue of originals is there but apart from that its pretty weak. Not value for money at $8/mo. On the other hand there is a legit service that gives me the sports I'm interested in (minus basketball), all HBO shows and recent movies at $3/mo. I'm canceling my subscription to Netflix for now because I find I don't actually spend any time watching it.
      - ghaff 10y ago
        Even in the US, Netflix is for watching their originals plus a pretty good back catalog of TV shows. If you're looking for anything else, it's a bonus if they happen to have it but you shouldn't really count on it. A former Netflix tech guy once told me that "People get Netflix for the movies and stay for the TV shows." Though that's probably less true than it used to be given Netflix Originals and a pretty wide recognition that their streaming movie catalog is limited. Today it's probably the Originals that drive the purchasing (as with HBO).
tn13 10y ago
Legacy and entrenched interests. Cable services have optimized their process to call and convert users instead of offering them something useful. TV is often bundled with internet and you are charged extra without you explictly asking for it.
JoshTriplett 10y ago
> Why can't they just charge tv subscribers the whole amount The secret is that there's no "whole amount", because that would imply the concept of "enough money". There's no such thing as "enough money". I mean that entirely non-sarcastically; to the extent it doesn't go to cover their costs, it goes to increase their profit, which has no upper bound. If they've found a way to extract more money, they'll do it. They question then becomes "to what extent have they found a larger revenue stream, and to what extent have they obtained more money now by alienating customers and driving them to other services".
- Bombthecat 10y ago
  I expect from Netflix no less. As soon the growth phase is over. They will turn to ads.
  - thomasz 10y ago
    In that case, I'm dead sure that a lot of their customers will return to piracy.
    - hkmurakami 10y ago
      How many is a lot? If the proportion of revenue increase outweighs subscriber loss, it's still worth inserting ads.
      - Freak_NL 10y ago
        Only if all competitors did the same. Unlike cable or terrestrial broadcast television, with Netflix the consumer has choice and can simply go to a competitor (this includes piracy). If Netflix starts experimenting with advertisements, they will give competitors a chance to move in on the subscribers that won't stand for it. Losing subscribers is fine if they don't go anywhere else (because they can't), but losing subscribers to a competitor is a risky move.
  - JoshTriplett 10y ago
dragonwriter 10y ago
> Why are there ads on cable tv? To pay the bills. > Why can't they just charge tv subscribers the whole amount and get rid of ads on tv? That's what premium channels (HBO, Cinemax, etc.) do, and they appeal to a different audience than non-premium cable, because most people are more willing to accept the cost of advertising than the cost of paying for premium channels.
daemin 10y ago
In Australia when pay/cable TV first came in it was ad free, but then ads were slowly added to it, first just ads for content on the channel, but then normal ads came in. People were rightly angry about this because they thought that by paying for TV they could skip the ads. However it turned out that by paying for TV they were signaling to advertisers that they were better off (and willing to spend money for things) than regular free-to-air TV watching people, and therefore their eyeballs were worth more. So now pay/cable TV in Australia has more ads per hour than free to air TV.
candiodari 10y ago
https://ir.netflix.com/common/download/download.cfm?companyid=NFLX&fileid=924418&filekey=1AB3E1F3-4D15-43E2-AB25-330CAF92E993&filename=Consolidated_Balance_Sheet.xlsx https://ir.netflix.com/common/download/download.cfm?companyi... Look at the bottom line. Netflix lost 126 million dollars in 3 months. Revenue per user is negative and going down. Needless to say, this can't last. Either price more than doubles, or ads come.
- dpark 10y ago
  I don't understand what you're reading that's different from what I'm reading. Where do you get this 126 million dollar loss? Netflix reported net income of $66.7MM for the quarter and $186.7MM for the year. [1] And how could revenue per user be negative? Even if Netflix were burning cash they wouldn't have negative revenue. [1 (xlsx)] http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/NFLX/3717249512x0x924401/FE69AB43-B923-4CAB-AB31-E538EC6BAE47/Earnings_Tables_1.17.16.xlsx http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/NFLX/3717249512x0x924...

coderdude 10y ago

There aren't any ads on Netflix to begin with so I don't think that comment really nails anything. The shows are just good.

tantanel 10y ago

Well, Netflix does have advertising in their originals, but it's much less in intrusive than the regular ad breaks. It comes in the form of product placement - characters preferring certain brands of beer, going to certain supermarkets, being fascinated by certain gadgets etc. House of Cards even had a warning about it at the beginning of the show, at least on Netflix UK. Personally I'm not too bothered by it as long as it's subtle, and so far it has been.

sleepychu 10y ago
Perhaps I'm just sensitive to it but the House of Cards placement in particular seemed really conspicuous to me. (Maybe especially because they just all had iPhones in the previous season and so there were lots of iPhone shots when they used their phones). But generally I find I notice the product placement spots because they seem out of the flow of the program, I guess they work best when the brand is more hands-off and lets the creator do it subtly.
- tantanel 10y ago
  I think I would have noticed far less of the placements if it hadn't been for the "warning" before the episodes. :)
  - sleepychu 10y ago
    Amusingly I didn't notice the warning!
- kyriakos 10y ago
  I don't even notice them and even if I had I wouldn't mind. I mean characters will use a phone in the series, the production might as well get something out of it. It becomes a problem when the plot is built around the product placement e.g its done a lot in modern family
  - DanBC 10y ago
    It was pretty heavy handed in some episodes of House of Cards. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGDgnp7-uck https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGDgnp7-uck

moomin 10y ago

Never mind advertising, look at how awful the interface is on Amazon to get an idea of why Netflix's content is crushing it. For instance, Transparent and Catastrophe are both Amazon Prime shows and are reportedly excellent. I have never seen the UI suggest I watch them. It's too busy suggesting I buy something. (Oh yeah, advertising...)

ethbro 10y ago
I only use the Amazon app on a slightly-old LG tv, but it's still pretty terrible. Slow, ugly, poor UX. Netflix on the same device is excellent.
citizenkeen 10y ago
Every time I use Amazon, I say "I wish this UI was half as good as Netflix's." Every time I use Hulu, I say "I wish this UI was half as good as Amazon's."
- JBlue42 10y ago
  So much this. Netflix > Amazon > Hulu. For players: Amazon's interface is much better than it used to be when Prime TV firt began but it has a lot of gimmicks too that take time to understand. Hulu's still buffers or gets stuck on an ad or does something dumb. Finding stuff: Hulu isn't great for that and I hate my queue/watchlist. I think it was following in the footsteps of Netflix, switching to the big pictures, which I'm assuming is meant for swipe-y screens/tvs more so than the computer browser these days. The findability of items on Amazon is appalling, despite having a generally good selection. To actually browse, on Prime and Netflix at least, I use instantwatcher.com.
lobster_johnson 10y ago
I have an Apple TV, so to watch Amazon content I'm consigned to stream it from my phone using AirPlay. However, that works surprisingly well. And it has a bonus feature: While the episode is playing, you get annotations on the phone about what actors are on the screen and what music is playing, with the ability to click on them to get bios etc. (I'm sure this isn't offered on every show streaming on Prime; the last example I remember was Goliath.)

flurdy 10y ago

This a million. Hence why I only watch BBC IPlayer, Netflix and somewhat Amazon Prime. No ads. Also why I don't bother streaming from UK's other commercial channels e.g. ITV and Channel 4 as they are riddled with ads. And you have to log into them which is annoying, not helped by rubbish players especially on Linux. May also be that their programming is mostly irrelevant, e.g. reality show and singing contests etc. I do endure some ads when streaming sports channels. (Sky sports, BT Sports, Eurosport). But at least then they are limited to before and after the events.

JumpCrisscross 10y ago
> Hence why I only watch BBC IPlayer, Netflix and somewhat Amazon Prime. No ads. No third-party ads. Prime pre-roll advertises its shows in its own show.
- flurdy 10y ago
  I am ok with that. It at least is somewhat relevant. And Im not really watching the screen yet, adjusting ear plugs etc.
- alphonsegaston 10y ago
  This somehow never fails to anger me with HBO as well. Why are you interrupting a service I'm paying for to advertise...the service? They could just have a previews section in their apps and call it good.
jon-wood 10y ago
I've been doing TV via iPlayer, (formally) piracy, and now Amazon Prime and Netflix for about five years now. I can't stand watching TV with adverts now, I find it almost impossible to follow a TV show when the story is being interrupted every 15 minutes to bombard me with adverts for things I don't want, so I just don't bother starting.
- ethbro 10y ago
  This, more than anything else, sums up why Netflix is doing so well. Viewers/subscribers are a zero sum game, as they're not growing as a total in places like the US. Traditional content was designed in a content-scarce environment (from the few broadcast channels, to a few more cable channels, to VHS, to DVD). That's not the world we live in anymore: now it's a time-scarce environment. There's more content (both legacy and new) than I could hope to consume, so I'm only interested in the best content for me. Traditional content providers aren't optimized for micro-targeting.

muse900 10y ago

I was paying sky in the UK around £70 a month. I tried to watch Friends on comedy central, which is 20 minutes per episode... each episode had 3 ad slots... 3!!! ad!!! slots... and I was paying £70 a month for that thing, they were trying to milk me out... I've quit sky and I don't miss it at all, and am very glad I quit it.

KineticLensman 10y ago
I've also abandoned Sky to a combination of BT (my broadband provider) and Amazon Prime on a Firestick. In my experience so far Amazon has much less pre-movie advertising and also doesn't interrupt movie end-credits with a very intrusive ad while you are still in the movie's 'zone', which really annoyed me. The downside is the top-up charges of a few quid over and above prime membership costs to get most good films and TV shows. But for the amount I watch TV, this is still affordable, and the overall range of content is much larger than sky, even if you have to pay extra sometimes.

dagw 10y ago

Personally I believe the pressure of reaching syndication and too long seasons ruins things as much as, if not more than, advertising.

Esau 10y ago

Agreed. I recently subscribed to Spotify and I love it.

Shivetya 10y ago

even that short spam fest of commercials prior to the show I wanted to watch on HBO's service was enough to make me cancel after the season ended. I simply didn't want to watch anything else they offered because of unskippable ad spam; its like those horrid DVD ads that some companies still have. Still, while some of their original content is good I am not subscribing to their service just for that, let alone I don't need six semi super hero shows. If they keep pairing down their catalog I am going to lose interest real fast

alistproducer2 10y ago

I'm going to have to agree. I recently cut the cord and now when I watch network TV (via my DTV tuner) commercials feel really jarring. One of the reasons I cut the cord and got off social media is I began to feel as though many of my thoughts were not my own anymore because I was subjecting myself to daily brainwashing . the further away from those services I get, the more abnormal they seem.

larrik 10y ago

The worst part of TV are the ads DURING the shows. Ads for other shows taking up a quarter of the screen, without regard for the what its blocking under it. Completely ridiculous.

draw_down 10y ago

Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM, and nobody ever got fired for talking bad about advertising on the internet.