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Here's where I'd normally complain about how our economic system requires prices to increase while product quality degrades to ensure ever-increasing profits fo

• johnnyo 3y ago
  Because it’s more profitable to have something that is paid for AND has ads. Same thing happened with cable TV when it first came out, it was advertised as ad free. Then it filled up with ads, and the streaming services came along promising no ads. Now the circle is repeating itself. Here is the NYTimes in 1981 on the topic https://www.nytimes.com/1981/07/26/arts/will-cable-tv-be-invaded-by-commercials.html https://www.nytimes.com/1981/07/26/arts/will-cable-tv-be-inv...
  • TehCorwiz 3y ago
    Greed is cyclical.
  • drtz 3y ago
    Thanks for sharing that NYT article. > ...critics say that the use of sponsorship could make cable programmers more vulnerable to censorship or control by advertisers, particularly in light of recent efforts by organizations such as the Moral Majority and its offshoot, the Coalition for Better Television. 40+ years later I think it's pretty clear this was an accurate prediction. > A much-cited - and widely disputed - study by the Benton & Bowles advertising agency found that the public would accept advertising if it meant a reduction or a holding-of-the-line on subscription fees... This is great until a year later when YoY revenue growth is flat and prices are increased anyway.
  • apwell23 3y ago
    > Because it’s more profitable to have something that is paid for AND has ads. how does it work for HBO then.
    • asdff 3y ago
      They use an embedded marketing strategy that isn't as obvious that you are watching advertising.
      • babypuncher 3y ago
        That explains the Starbucks cup in Game of Thrones season 8
        • Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
          If it was ever leaked that the Starbucks cup thing was a deliberate marketing stunt, I would be zero percent surprised.
    • burnte 3y ago
      No one said paid only doesn't work, the commenter simply pointed out the obvious that TWO revenue streams is better than one.
      • apwell23 3y ago
        yea i was asking why its not better for hbo
        • burnte 3y ago
          No one said this wouldn't be better for HBO. They absolutely could make more revenue showing ads, that's not the model they're on, presently, however.
  • deleted 3y ago
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  • vel0city 3y ago
    The article doesn't once say cable TV never had ads; it only says the public had some perception that would be the case. In fact, it even talks about how cable channels were bringing in millions of dollars in ad revenues despite being very small markets at the time. In reality, cable TV had ads from day one, decades before this article was published. Originally every cable TV station had ads, because they were just retransmissions of broadcast stations which ran ads. The first nation-wide cable TV station had ads, and many of the early cable-only channels (CNN, USA, others) had ads.
• neogodless 3y ago
  Amazon's market research suggested to them that you (might) value your time enough to pay an extra $3/month to avoid watching ads.
  • johnnyo 3y ago
    More specifically, the total revenue of ads + the people willing to pay $3/month is greater than the revenue lost when people cancel their service due to ads
    • deleted 3y ago
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    • JadeNB 3y ago
      > More specifically, the total revenue of ads + the people willing to pay $3/month is greater than the revenue lost when people cancel their service due to ads The bundling makes cancellation particularly unlikely: you can't (or at least I don't know how to) cancel the Prime Video part of the Prime package alone, so there's no way to show your dissatisfaction with this short of cancelling the entire Prime membership. Which this latest push, however small on its own, has been enough to get me finally to consider doing, but it's still tough.
      • gknoy 3y ago
        I'll just watch even fewer things on Prime, I guess. Everything about the UI and watching experience seems worse than Netflix, but then ... that's been worsening recently as well in ways I can't quantify.
        • PaulHoule 3y ago
          I canceled my Prime a while back when AMZN's started quoting 5 day delivery to my location, though on the rare times when I do order something from AMZN it often takes 7 days. The thing is I live less than 3 hours from a big warehouse (people who live in the same ZIP code as one of those warehouses often get 5-day shipping) but it seems that the residents of Upstate New York and New England are frequently treated as unpeople when it comes to facilities and infrastructure.
• r00fus 3y ago
  Greed. That's why. Having a wildly profitable business isn't enough. It has to be as profitable as the market will bear. Pure capitalism.
• wilg 3y ago
  Absolutely, advertisers are big companies who don't really care how much they're spending on ads. Especially big brands, they have no idea how much advertising helps them, and they don't care about the budget that much. They'll absolutely pay more to put an ad in front of you than you think it's worth to remove it. That's the whole thing with ads.
• xhrpost 3y ago
  I'm sure this has been going on for a while but I'm noticing an even bigger obsession with companies manifesting ad inventory locations everywhere possible. Biggest standout recently is Lyft placing large ads in their app while I'm waiting on a ride that I'm paying them for! I too used to think something that was paid for directly with actual money meant no ads but not anymore.
  • maicro 3y ago
    One of my favorite examples is LCD screens on gas pumps - yelling at you about various deals in the store, as you're standing there _giving them money for the fuel you're pumping_. Some at least have a mute button...
    • deleted 3y ago
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    • brewdad 3y ago
      I will go to a gas station with those loud screens exactly once. After that, I have written them off. There is a station in my in-law's town with those. I had to fill up there once about 10 years ago as my fuel light was on. I'm 95% sure they got rid of the screens a while back but I will never go to that station again if I have a choice.
      • JohnFen 3y ago
        I've accidentally hit those sorts of gas stations a couple of times. I didn't even bother getting gas at them, though. I got back in my car and drove away. I'm not willing to pay a company to abuse me. There are other stations that actually value their customers, and I'll go to them. This same attitude is also why I stopped doing any business with Amazon years ago. They became intolerable.
    • chankstein38 3y ago
      If I go to those I'll lean with my hand over the speaker if they don't have a mute button. I'm not listening to whatever garbage they put together there. I wish I could do more but I need gas... I hate this world sometimes.
• thomastjeffery 3y ago
  Monopoly is the best position to implement anti-competitive behavior. Copyright is monopoly. It should be no surprise that Copyright has resulted in anti-competitive behavior. No one can afford to compete with large media corporations, because Copyright explicitly turns media corporations into monopolies.
  • robertlagrant 3y ago
    Copyright's not monopoly. Do you mean the company that owns a TV show has a "monopoly" on that TV show? That's not what people mean monopoly.
    • thomastjeffery 3y ago
      Copyright is literally a monopoly over the redistribution of a "work". That's what the word means. Without the concept of monopoly, Copyright is meaningless. If your assertion is that the concept of monopoly somehow keeps itself exclusive to that specific context, then I sincerely disagree. The system is what the system is made of.
      • robertlagrant 3y ago
        > If your assertion is that the concept of monopoly somehow keeps itself exclusive to that specific context, then I sincerely disagree That's fine, but you're using a strange definition. Monopoly is something that's bad. I own my house, which could be called a monopoly. I am my kids' dad - another monopoly, in the world of strange definitions. It's not useful to use words with specific meanings, particularly negative meanings, and repurpose them for everyday, non-negative situations. It's the opposite of useful. And that's why I hope you retain your monopoly on this silly definition.
        • thomastjeffery 3y ago
          On the contrary! I'm choosing my words carefully, based on their meaning. Property and monopoly are similar, but not the same. Monopoly applies to a set of items, not a single item or group of items. For example, you can "own" a copy of Pulp Fiction. You can watch it, you can break it, and you can sell it. What you are not allowed to do is sell a copy of the one you own. You are not allowed to do so, because Miramax LLC was granted a monopoly over the set of all Pulp Fiction copies. You can own your house, but that is not the same as monopolizing the entire market of houses.
• gretch 3y ago
  > why can't we just have something that's truly paid and ad-free? We can. You just have to make it first. This is not a question to ask of others, it a just question you ask yourself. Once you answer it for yourself, then just realize that same answer applies to everyone from their perspective.
  • drtz 3y ago
    > We can. You just have to make it first. But how? I don't have the resources to build something like this on my own. I'm skeptical I could convince many investors to give me money to build something pitched as "just like Prime Video but without the ad revenue" when Amazon has certainly already done market research and determined this is the best path to maximize profit.
    • rrr_oh_man 3y ago
      Exactly.
  • Terr_ 3y ago
    > We can. You just have to make it first. They've been made. Repeatedly. They just don't persist. Our economic system won't let them.
• joemaller1 3y ago
  Advertisers are sort of benevolent here, if not lesser victims. Google, Facebook and now Amazon realized the big money is in brokering ads. As brokers, they know everything and control everything, exploiting both the viewers and advertisers.
• mitthrowaway2 3y ago
  The problem is that the most lucrative advertising market is to advertise to those people who are willing to pay extra to not see ads. The people who are willing to save money by seeing ads, are also the people who don't have excess discretionary cash that they'd be willing to spend on the products advertisers are advertising to them. This is the paradox that keeps driving this industry around in circles, swallowing its own tail.
  • rrr_oh_man 3y ago
    An excellent point. This is why we can’t have good things in a growth-paradigm economy.
    • robertlagrant 3y ago
      Good point. We'd have no streaming services and we'd be happy.
• milesvp 3y ago
  There was an interesting interview with a long timer with google on a podcast I listen to (freakanomics?) where the concept of ads came up. Apparently very early on google did the analysis and found that google search provided something like $50 (can't remember the exact number) of actualizable annual value to a typical user. Which is to say they could charge around $5 monthly and it'd still be worth it for most people to pay. But the ads. They could make way more than $50 per user just during the christmas season alone. And so it was a no brainer for them to go with ads (despite anti ad sentiment being a key part of the papers that led to the creation of google...). So, to answer your question. I think we do value our time less than advertisers do. Worse, is I suspect your eyeballs becomes more valuable to advertisers the more your willing to pay to not see ads...
• dgrin91 3y ago
  I mean you can, it just costs $3/month more now. Basically any service out there has truly ad free versions if you pay more. It sucks that the price point keeps getting farther away, but it does exist.
• whartung 3y ago
  It is paid and ad free. You just have to pay the new rate. Perhaps they should have raised the rate of base Prime, and then offered a lower priced paid w/ads option. But there was probably an issue with the annual holders in that case. So, instead they lowered the features and now folks can up to the new subscription.
  • int_19h 3y ago
    How long until the current ad-free tier becomes "less ads", and you have to pay even more to get rid of those?
• edanm 3y ago
  > Instead, I'll complain about commercials: why can't we just have something that's truly paid and ad-free? Do we actually value our time less than advertisers do? Yes, clearly, as revealed by the way most consumers act. How many people do you know that actually pay for YouTube to get rid of ads? I personally do, and I encourage everyone else to do so, but I assume it's a tiny market.
• duped 3y ago
  > our economic system requires prices to increase while product quality degrades to ensure ever-increasing profits for shareholders Only in the absence of competition. Prices go down all the time while growth remains positive. > why can't we just have something that's truly paid and ad-free You can, it just costs more. Ads are a way to make sure that there's a product for more price sensitive customers while keeping revenue high. The real problem for streamers isn't pricing, it's churn.