Netflix mulls introducing free ad-supported tier. The circle is complete

the ads are minimally intrusive — that is, highly relevant and engaging — they should not detract from the overall user experience
In what universe do ads, no matter how "relevant and engaging", ever not detract from the overall experience?
- I've been watching Monk recently, without ads, and it's very interesting how television shows used to be written and edited for commercials. It's dead obvious where the commercials used to be, and even that detracts from the overall experience.
  
  Some shows we've watched spend their time "recapping" after the 'ad breaks", playing same scenes we just saw. Drives me nuts, wastes my time and feels so dated.
  
  Its painfully obvious when watching Star Trek TNG.
  
  I don't mind those breaks... It feels like going to the next chapter in a book.
  But actual ads, yea, not for a service that costs.
  Though this whole thing is funny - they collect even more user data than they did with cable or broadcast, and now want to show you ads too.
  Can't wait to finish my media server setup.
  
  There are also shows that based jokes around the fact that they were going to or just came back from a commercial break and now you don't have those in those shows. And now, I guess, they'll go back to editing shows for ads.
  What a weird modern landscape we've made for ourselves.
  
  modern shows frame things differently to account for people watching on tiny phone screens and we might be bothered a few years down the line when we get holodecks or ~~mind control~~ implants
  
  It's even worse if you're watching competition shows:
  "Coming up: things you're going to see in the next 5 minutes."
  "Welcome back: recap of what you've seen in the last 5 minutes."
- I hate ads, but sometimes prime puts 2 minutes of ads at the beginning of a show or a movie and then no ads, I'm ok-ish with this, much better than imdb or tubi that play the same commercial every 15 minutes
  If I start a stream and it shows that it will have several breaks I stop it and get it from the high seas
  
  I would be fine with that if it was free and didn't reply the ads if I stop and resume.
  If I am paying money, then ads are unacceptable.
  
  I wish they wouldn't do that. If i have to hear about Southern New Hampshire University again I'm gonna hurt somebody.
  If I agree to free thing and have to watch ads, aight fine.
  But at least make them different man, i hate that they play the same one over and over again. It does not make me want to buy your product.
- Engaging is the last thing I want from an ad
  
  You engage with the skip button
- Especially in shows not edited for commercials. They just throw them in the middle somewhere so the show gets cut mid-sentence. It's ridiculous. If you want to show me ads after that episode, then fine. But killing the entire pacing of the show for your ads in a service people are paying for already? that's just infuriating.
  
  Fuck, these days even in shows that are edited for commercials, they'll ignore those breaks and just put ads wherever they feel like it
- When is interrupting my viewing experience to show me an ad ever actually relevant?
- Those ads that are now inserted during the program on us tv shows are annoying as fuck Banner at the bottom or side... Goddamnit.
- Cerveza Cristal?
- Always does but some implementations are better than others and bills still need to get paid. Network TV can’t force you to watch ads before beginning your program, but streaming can. I’m irritated that Prime has ads even though I pay for it but at least the way they handle them (only before the program starts) is acceptable to me. Interrupting a program to show ads the way YouTube does is horrible customer experience. What’s crazy to me is the way network tv shows have gone from 22 minutes in a 30 minute block to 17-19 minutes.
- Honest answer? Kids toys ads. The kids love the ads more than the show sometimes.
  It sucks for parents though. Gets expensive.
  
  That shit should be illegal.
- Maybe some old-school 60s' "episode is financed by
  <something very good soap>
  " text in the beginning?
  Or product placement, if the events (EDIT: on the screen) unfold in our time.
- Perhaps to people who are used to watching ad infested cable and don't pay for ad-free streaming. So it's not that ads aren't detracting from the experience but that some folks are used to it. Getting those folks is growth. Number go up.
- When the content isn't that good to begin with?

I just wish they could bundle all the subscriptions into packages or bundles and I could watch the shows at pre-determined times.
- Stop it. Executives don't understand sarcasm and you've doomed us all!
  
  It's okay.
  Executives got were they are by being smart and making good decisions, not by listening to idiots on the internet.
- They could even provide an electronic box (for a nominal fee, or course) that shows me a menu of all the shows and movies that are available and what times they are going to play. That way I wouldn't have to search through a bunch of streaming services. It could all just be in one place.
  
  Why not sell a book that has that information at grocery stores?
- Maybe they could add some kind of auto scrolling view that informs what is playing at those times? That'd be handy, sometimes I can't find anything to watch.
  
  I'd probably end up watching that more than I watch the shows.
- Cool thing about this is they could assemble these bundles into parallel live streams we could simply flick between to find what we prefer to watch. If they run into a problem of people flicking away when ads run then just align the ads to run at the same time on each “channel” if I can call them that ?
- They could bundle in my idea of having a telephone in your house, not a cell phone more like a land phone

Tech bros reinvent broadcast TV.
- Told people this years ago when pewdie pie became a millionaire selling ads. Like that was the time to wake up and hate every single one of these content creators for selling out and making the internet the hellscape this is. But no we Revere and emulate these people.
  
  This is a bit unnecessarily tough on independent content creators... what exactly do you expect them to do? Make no money from their content? How would they be able to make a living?
  
  Who reveres and emulates PewDiePie lol
  
  Like that was the time to wake up and hate every single one of these content creators for selling out
  And then what? Stop consuming their content?
- With my NAS, plex and Usenet I reinvented streaming. It’s awesome.
  
  Im the one that was paying for Netflix for my family, but the password crack down motivated me to learn how to build a server and go full arrs. They had a good thing going, but now that $26 a month will be used to buy hdds.
  
  What I fears is that its a matter of time before entertainment industry figures out a way to stop those services. I've even begun to see discussions that open source may be struggling to remain relevant. Whose taking over for the power houses from early days. So much talent out there. But I really worry the community will shrink over time because we all raiser a generation on the concept of monetization rather than open collaboration. I look out on the internet and the loudest voices are artists and content creators. Both groups who push the fuck you pay me mentality that I believe was not what we all had originally on the internet and it makes me so worried to think how that will only grow if there is no push back.

There's no better ad for piracy than the greed of corporations. Don't let ads shit in your head. They disrespect you, you disrespect them.
- I have hardware dedicated to blocking ads on my home network.
  
  That will only go so far unfortunately. And network level ad blocking won’t protect you from their ads if they’re served from the same servers the content is.
  
  What hardware do you use? I have a pihole. Unfortunately it doesn't block ads on Youtube except in the web browser.
- "People are taking the piss out of you every day. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you. You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity. Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head. You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don't owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don't even start asking for theirs."
  Banksy

This is step 86 in the plan. Step 87 is make people pay for the previously free service
- Didn't they already had a paid and with ads tier?
  
  Yeah but now the roped in new suckers that didn't know they need the product and the price is now 10 per month
  
  Growth hacking. Shake loose more market share with the "FREE!!" version and then the frog boil

"The enshittifucation will continue until profits improve." --CEOs of Publicly Traded Companies

I'll take "Organizations that made it to the top by doing something different, only to fall under leadership that doesn't understand what made them successful and descend into ruins" for 200, Alex.
Seriously, Jeopardy team - this is a rich category:
Netflix advertisements.
Zoom mandates staff return to offices.
Microsoft forgets what the "P" in "PC" stands for.
Toys R Us implements a shitty holiday gift returns policy.
Sears decides to sacrifice reputation for quarterly stock price gains.
Walgreens decides bottom-of-the-barrel incompetent pharmacists can uphold their "get it all done in one visit" secret sauce.
Radio Shack decides that once-every-two-years cellphone contract sales are the future for holding passionate electronics hobbyists' loyalty.
- Netflix can't do what got them to the top.
  Fuck everything about the changes they've made for the last several years, but they were always going to hit a wall when content owners put their content on their own platforms.
  
  Netflix can't do what got them to the top.
  They can't grow that way but they could easily hold on and remain profitable, popular and successful.
  They were well on their way to enjoying "Kleenex" or "Oreo" stable market success, but their leadership and shareholders apparently aren't satisfied with winning.
- I worked at Radio Shack in 2012 for a few months and was told by my boss that if a customer wasn't there to buy a cell phone, be as little help to them as possible.
  
  That's heartbreaking. Radio Shack was so fun, while it lasted.
  
  It's a shame they went under during the rise of the maker movement. What an asset they could have been. I remember they started carrying arduino near the end and thought somebody must have tried to reach for their roots. Too little, too late.

It's almost like all these CEOs and MBAs are just shooting in the dark because of the $$$ in their eyes, but the fact remains that the market is no longer responding favorably to their absolute need for year-over-year growth.
- It isn't? You might be looking at a different market.

"Free ad-supported" makes you no different than a hundred other garbage-tier streaming services.
- And in 2 years they'll move to 3 tiers, free with ads, paid with slightly less ads and even more expensive than before but no ads...
  
  And eventually they’ll just pull the no ads version altogether.

If they aren't going to charge for access otherwise then I don't think being ad supported is such a bad thing. Much more honest than subscription pricing and ads in my opinion.
- yeah, imo it's either ads or paid. not both. both is scummy

Streaming is just cable
- There is one benefit, at least for now. You aren't locked into long term contracts like cable has/had.
  
  Imo that's pretty much the only benefit these days. But I'm also waiting for those 1 year, 2 year, etc "deals" where they offer $1/mo off or something
  
  I expect to see this soon as a way of combatting people who join one for a month or two, binge, then switch to another provider.
  It might not come in the form of contracts at first, maybe they will just jack up the price of month to month high enough that people will voluntarily buy into a contract or yearly pre-purchase.
  Trust me, there is always a way to make more money if you're OK with being anti-consumer. It's just a matter of time.
- Not until we're having to sit through upwards of 20 minutes on ads per "1 hour" episode
- The difference is that my ad blocker is quick and painless to set up, where TiVo involved some capital and planning.
  
  Didn't some cable companies get all butthurt that you could fast forward through the recorded commercials?
  
  For now. YouTube is already starting to dedicate serious resources to anti ad blocking. I'm sure other streaming services aren't that far behind.
- but more more inconvenient since now you have about ten different apps instead of everything in the same place.

They will still be selling user data whether you opt for the ad supported tier or not, so get used to that.
- If they haven't been doing so for at least a decade, I'm sure their shareholders will want to know why not.

The advertising ouroboros continues to devour itself

My Plex share doesn't care lol
The way the industry is pulling the screws tighter and tighter is just ugly to watch, and it's hard not to be caught out.
- Isn't Plex also slowly going down the shitter? Like, with their social features and stuff?
  
  They do keep adding garbage that nobody wants, but the core product still works great. I plan on getting a jellyfin docker running in parallel though so I’m prepared in the event they piss me off too much.
  
  switch to jellyfin
  
  That's why I've been using Emby. Works just fine for free.

I won't support any streaming service that has a sub+ad tier. Ads with no sub or sub no ads, anything else is incredibly greedy and the same as cable TV.

Enshittification? ✔️

Life is stupid. What are we even DOING here???
- Building shareholder value, duh.
- That’s a broad leap no? Giants rise and fall. Look at betamax, BlockBuster, Kodak, etc
  There’s always going to be something better out there, as long as you’re still looking and leaving the old post. Chin up!
  
  .........betamax as a giant? They entered a format war, and died in their first few years of existance.
  The others I get. Kodak was around almost 100 years, blockbuster nearly 40, both at one time the dominant leaders of their industries. Both fell to failing to adapt to change.
  But betamax? It came out around the same time as vhs, and vhs was cheaper.
  Same with 8-tracks and cassettes.
- Getting stupider

Doesn't this already exist or did I imagine it?
I thought they introduced it years ago
Edit: oh I read again, this time it's free
- Then:
  Pay + ad
  Now:
  Free to watch + ads
  
  See, now I'm fine with that. I pay for Netflix and I want what I pay for to stay ad-free. Having an ad-supported tier with no fee in addition to that means that there are options for other people without enshittifying my experience.
  That's a world of difference to what Amazon have done where they've shoved ads into the service that I thought I was paying for, and then offered to charge me even more to get my original ad-free service back.

Do it!
Ill cut subscription to free tier let adblockers do the rest. Profit.
- Let me know if it works and I'll follow. I don't need quality, I just need something for my kids to watch occasionally.
  
  If that's all you need, I'd probably just start using Tubi, Pluto, and Plex. Pluto and Plex have some good live channels (Tubi might also, haven't checked). Tubi and Plex have a decent catalogue of on demand shows and movies. Of course if you already have Netflix, it might be hard if there's a specific show they're used to.

Great for piracy!

Piracy it is then...

When my paid service started giving me ads I stopped watching it. I've been paying them since before streaming and in the past couple years stopped paying because T-Mobile started paying. When T-Mobile quits paying we'll close the account.

still gonna stick to torrents for my media netflix cause i wanna actually have control of them

Obviously the majority of content is not going to be available. It will essentially b a Tubi clone or what Netflix streaming was when they first launched it.

Ads provide a much needed break so I can check my phone without missing anything.
/s
- watch youtube videos on your phone while the Netflix ads play -> Watch Netflix on your TV while the youtube ads play. Perfection

I look forward to when someone releases a box to record the screen or shows you want to watch on Netflix just in case the rights gets pulled before you get the chance to watch it. Added benefit is they can make it skip ads too. Gotta have a catchy name... like... NeVO for Netflix Video On(demand)
- Tablo already exists
  
  Was making a comparison to TiVO and old cable/satellite programming 😂

Rebrand to CableFlix

They already have an ad tier (tmobile bundles it into some of their plans). Is this going to be an even more ad tier?
- Mega ad tier.

They want to squeeze out that extra bit of profit and get the users that never subscribed on there so they can boast about improved numbers.

This is the best summary I could come up with:
Netflix, once a pioneer of ad-free viewing that offered a break from traditional TV norms, is now contemplating launching free ad-supported versions of its service in markets like Europe and Asia, Bloomberg reported.
Greg Peters, Netflix’s co-CEO, recently told The Verge that they view ad sales as “a new muscle” for the streaming giant to “build” and then apparently flex.
According to a recent Madison and Wall survey, cited by Bloomberg, Netflix currently ranks around ninth or tenth in the online video advertising space, all while lagging far behind not only YouTube, but also Disney and Paramount, and struggling to catch up with Amazon and Roku.
Maxine Gurevich of Horizon Media argued that as long as people find the service valuable and the ads are minimally intrusive — that is, highly relevant and engaging — they should not detract from the overall user experience.
For example, Netflix’s intention to show ads during the NFL’s Christmas games to all subscribers, including those in the ad-free tier, is a tad disconcerting.
Only time will tell what happens with Netflix’s subscription tiers, and whether we’ll see moderately priced ad-supported options alongside premium ad-free versions that will be generally out of reach for regular consumers.
The original article contains 589 words, the summary contains 201 words. Saved 66%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Time to bring back Tivo
- That's the problem. They already wisened up and HDMI, the propietary standard they forced everyone to change to for HD+, has built-in DRM. Most smart TV have DRM built-in as well.
  
  Cryptanalysis researchers demonstrated flaws in HDCP as early as 2001. In September 2010, an HDCP master key that allows for the generation of valid device keys was released to the public, rendering the key revocation feature of HDCP useless.[8][9] Intel has confirmed that the crack is real,[10] and believes the master key was reverse engineered rather than leaked.[11] In practical terms, the impact of the crack has been described as "the digital equivalent of pointing a video camera at the TV", and of limited importance for consumers because the encryption of high-definition discs has been attacked directly, with the loss of interactive features like menus.[12] Intel threatened to sue anyone producing an unlicensed device.[11]
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-bandwidth_Digital_Content_Protection