Netflix Is Experimenting With Advertising

derekmead writes: Netflix is experimenting with pre-roll and post-roll advertisements for some of its users. For now, it's just pitching it's own original programming. However, many are concerned that they plan to serve third-party ads, but the company says they have no plans to do so. They told Mashable in a statement: "We are not planning to test or implement third-party advertising on the Netflix service. For some time, we've teased Netflix originals with short trailers after a member finishes watching a show. Some members in a limited test now are seeing teases before a show begins. We test hundreds of potential improvements to the service every year. Many never extend beyond that."

Comments

In other words

[MightyMartian]

In other words, within a year or two we will be rolling out ads that you will be forced to watch before you can view the programming you pay a subscription fee for.

Re:In other words

[JMJimmy]

In other words, I'll be moving to the next service that does not advertise. Or just torrent/stream (with adblock of course).

Re:In other words

[Anonymous Coward]

So, just like cable?

Re:In other words

[Anonymous Coward]

Wont happen, people will leave in droves.

Re:In other words

[Anonymous Coward]

I understand the copyright holders are tightening the thumbscrews, but can't I just pay a higher monthly fee?

Re:In other words

[tepples]

I seem to remember reading speculation that Hulu would have to charge $20 or more per month for ad-free service in order to pay for its infrastructure and royalties.

Re:In other words

[jdavidb]

What you get from DVDs and paid movie services

Re:In other words

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly, the reason I pay them is to avoid the shit.

Netflix, this is the quickest way you can loose customers.

I stopped buying DVDs because of the forced trailers which are completely meaningless 6 months later and are just plain bloody annoying after that.

Maybe...just maybe actors etc are not worth the millions you pay them. Perhaps that is the "New" business model where Millions of dollars can be saved.

Re:In other words

[jamesdood]

That will get me to cancel my subscription, I don't need to watch most of the crap on there anyway and I gladly pay other services to NOT have to endure advertisements, we are constantly bombarded enough so any escape is good!

Re:In other words

[Anonymous Coward]

So... Hulu?

Re:In other words

[Vitriol Angst]

They'll suck like Hulu.

I mean damn,... experiment with not trying to wring ever escalating profit margins. Netflix is awesome -- and will get better with more original programming and the flood of Indie films that will go direct to web soon.

Adding commercials will just mean the same old suck of network television. The News Media already works for the people paying for the commercials -- not to inform the public. Netflix, your early adopters are the people who fled the lowering bar of network and cable TV.

Re:In other words

[OhPlz]

Except that Netflix doesn't have a regional monopoly. They'll lose customers to some other video on demand service. Dumb move on their part.

Re:In other words

[Anonymous Coward]

This. I'm a loyal Netflix subscriber but if they start to run ads, I'll go back to torrents so fast it'll make their heads spin.

Re: In other words

[AvitarX]

I really hope they don't do pre show ads, hbo does it, and it's a huge pain.

It's doubly a pain to see the same ones when binge watching.

I understand why hbo does this, they need to alert you to new content to keep you interested, but Netflix already does this on the home screen. They don't need to do ads, even for content I want to know about, before I watch something (I'm fine with it afterwards).

Re: In other words

[Mashiki]

I'd be up for it if they cut the price by 50% for those that are willing to see them, otherwise they can take their ads and shove them up their ass.

Re: In other words

[Qzukk]

It's doubly a pain to see the same ones when binge watching.

Those are absolutely the worst. Watching the same preview the second time is almost as bad as when I pull out a years old DVD and have* to sit through ancient trailers before I can start watching the movie. By the third time I see the same preview the same day, it's worse.

*: or use a non-compliant DVD player that allows skipping this shit. Either/or.

Re: In other words

[JMJimmy]

I'd be up for it if they cut the price by 50% for those that are willing to see them, otherwise they can take their ads and shove them up their ass.

That's the slippery slope that led to Cable TV.

Re:In other words

[Anubis IV]

Bingo. I've had an account on Hulu since it was back in closed beta, but I never "upgraded" to their for-pay Hulu Plus service because they don't remove the ads. It's just there for when I feel like having something running on the second monitor and don't really care what it is. I don't care about watching the latest and greatest, so Netflix has me covered with years of content that I'll never get through fully. If Netflix stops being awesome, I'll hop over to Amazon, iTunes, Google Play, the rumored YouTube paid subscription, or one of the other services that competes in this space. If those end up being too costly or not-awesome, I'll simply start playing more games and working on more side projects.

At this point, I really don't tolerate paying places that treat me as anything other than a valued customer. As it is, for $5-10, I can...
1) Enjoy a 40-hour game from Steam.
2) Enjoy a film or two at the local theaters (yes, it's that cheap here).
3) Enjoy two or three rented films via streaming.
4) Enjoy an entire month of ad-free Netflix.
5) Enjoy a multitude of snacks while coding for fun.
6) Enjoy a light meal with friends.
7) Waste 20-25% of my time watching ads on Hulu for content I would have already paid for.

One of those is not like the other. Netflix is not just competing against Hulu, and they need to remember that. They're competing against every other hobby their users have. Right now, they treat me well and do so for a good price, but if Netflix wants to join Hulu in treating their customers as their products, then I'll gladly say "bon voyage".

Re:In other words

[TheGratefulNet]

NF had its peak right before the big flix-gate (lol) when they upped the price, removed streaming and changed plans on everyone.

at that point, I dropped them and never looked back.

vpn is $10 or less. torrents are free. there are NO ADS in torrents. no drm, and good compression yet still watchable.

I have not found a reason to resume paying for content. if an enlightened company gives me a good reason, I could consider it. but I'm not interested in resuming netflix and now that they are starting to SHOW the dark side of their corp mentality, yeah, they are a done-deal and I predict a decline in their customer levels over time.

Re: In other words

[Noah Haders]

what if they ran ads instead of raising prices? would you pay more for an ad-free Netflix?

Re:In other words

[hambone142]

Remember the days when "pay TV" (cable) didn't have advertising?

If Netflix forces me to watch ads, I will do as you have suggested. Heck, that reminds me. I need to suspend my Netflix account.

Re:In other words

[kheldan]

Don't have Netflix anymore, and if this is the way of things then they can go fuck themselves or provide their service free of charge. What utter bullshit. You PAY for a service and you have ads shoved in your face? Seriously?

Re:In other words

[drinkypoo]

And if there is no such service, I'll just get another hobby. I hate ads that much.

Re: In other words

[praxis]

The HBO ads shown in their Now streams can be skipped, at least. I wonder if the same is true for Netflix ads.

Re: In other words

[praxis]

I would.

Re: In other words

[Anonymous Coward]

Depends on the amount of the increase.

Re:In other words

[praxis]

If they did, were ad free, and had a back catalog of things to watch, I'd pay that. Sadly, they don't offer that and the ads are a deal breaker. They instead get no viewership from me, paid or otherwise.

Re:In other words

[Anonymous Coward]

Hence the problem. They actually need to fund the things you love to watch somehow, they need to recoup the cost of hosting, the cost of getting the rights to play the content in multiple different countries, ad nauseam. They can only do so much of that while keeping subscription fees where they are because god knows cheap fucks like you would flip their lids over an extra few cents.

So they need to advertise to keep above water, but hey, you're not going to put up with _that_ bullshit now are you? You know full well you don't use Netflix. You're a thief. You use whatever torrent site suits your fancy and you proudly wave your "Adblock" wang in the face of anyone who will listen. Meanwhile the rest of us have to deal with increasingly more intrusive advertising, increasingly intrusive DRM, all because you're too fucking cheap to pay for something that COSTS MONEY TO FUCKING RUN.

The fact that this was modded insightful says as much about the DICE hivemind. You all think alike. You're convinced you have some god-given right to steal anything that isn't given to you for the price you demand.

You go ahead and switch to your torrent site, sunshine. I hope they bury you in a shallow grave of takedown letters and then sue your ass into a cardboard box on the street.

Re: In other words

[lgw]

I really hope they don't do pre show ads, hbo does it, and it's a huge pain.

The post-show ads I'm OK with, for Netflix, as it's nice to know what Netflix is working on and they're trivially skippable.

Re:In other words

[l0ungeb0y]

Or perhaps they are looking at ways to shore up their offerings against Youtube and other streaming services who have free-tier offerings. If they can offer a free streaming with ad rolls, they can increase their viewer base and offer ads to sell their standard subscription based streaming service.

Re: In other words

[Mashiki]

That's the slippery slope that led to Cable TV.

Really? Somehow it seems that it was the cable co's saying one thing, and doing something completely opposite. That's not a slippery slope, it's outright lying.

Re: In other words

[fahrbot-bot]

I'd be up for it if they cut the price by 50% for those that are willing to see them, otherwise they can take their ads and shove them up their ass.

Sure. First they'll double the price - citing "market forces" and/or "distribution costs" - then offer you a 50% discount to tolerate ads / commercials. Problem solved ...

Re: In other words

[Shakrai]

Umm, no. CATV stands for Community Antenna TeleVision; it evolved because people in areas without OTA reception (i.e., valleys) put up a shared antenna to receive OTA signals.

Re: In other words

[mjwx]

I'd be up for it if they cut the price by 50% for those that are willing to see them, otherwise they can take their ads and shove them up their ass.

They'd need to cut the price by 100% for me to accept ads.

Re: In other words

[slickepott]

Yes I would.

Re: In other words

[Teckla]

would you pay more for an ad-free Netflix?

I would rather pay more than have ads.

Re:In other words

[Anonymous Coward]

In other words, they'll save you $2/month by showing you commercials instead of charging you that extra $2/month.

Re:In other words

[Anonymous Coward]

You're convinced you have some god-given right to steal anything that isn't given to you for the price you demand.

We've learned something from the corporate overlords: You don't need to have a right to have something if you already have the power to steal it. Rights, schmights. If Netflix won't fight for its customers, keeping costs low, then there needs to be a new market pressure to force it.

Ads are designed to bend our perceptions of worth for the benefit of the company that produced them, and at the expense of the customers. Avoiding advertisements is avoiding mental damage.

You go ahead and switch to your torrent site, sunshine. I hope they bury you in a shallow grave of takedown letters and then sue your ass into a cardboard box on the street.

Fuck torrents. I'll take personal rips of my own DVDs and BluRays, thank you very much! Avoid the hassle of torrents, avoid commercials, avoid perpetual rentals that can go away at any time, and avoid paying for the same thing over and over by watching some sodding ad.

I hope they bury you in a shallow grave of takedown letters and then sue your ass into a cardboard box on the street.

And I hope you have a nice day after you get all the sand out of your ass. It makes me grouchy and Schadenfreudic too. You sound like you need a nice day. And maybe a hug. And probably to get laid.

Re: In other words

[Darinbob]

No, Cable TV kept raising the price by 50% even with the advertisements.

Re: In other words

[Darinbob]

Pre-show can be bad though. That's my bandwidth, it's not infinite and it's not free. The home page ads for their own shows should be good enough to garner interest.

Seriously, do we need a DVR to watch netflix just so we can skip the ads like the old days...

Re:In other words

[Darinbob]

But we're ALREADY paying Netflix. They don't need ad revenue to fund their servers, they're not just some wannabe journalist blogger whining about the lack of donations. Advertisements plus a subscription is just stupid, or evil, or both. Same with cable tv, but there we could easily fast forward past the ads and never see them (the evil ad industry even sued replaytv over this capability).

Post-show ads are ok, we can skip those. Ads on their homepage is fine. They can even have a special "Netflix Originals" category (which I suspect some people would like). But non-skippable pre show ads would drive away a non-trivial segment of their subscribers, including quite a lot of people who decided on Netflix over Hulu-Plus.

Netflix needs to remember that we cut the cord once already, we can cut it a second time if needed. People are assuming we must watch the shows, but it's not true and we've learned to cut back. Anyone already using torrent is probably not concerned about being legal with netflix anyway.

Re: In other words

[Anonymous Coward]

Here in my neck of the woods, TVs make interruptions on their shows to advertise their own other shows. Not a commercial in the strict sense. The disease of intervals have no cure.

Captcha: audited

Re: In other words

[Anonymous Coward]

This.

Attention Netflix. If you're not making enough money then charge more, if you can.

Serve ads of any kind to me and I'm done with you.

Re:In other words

[93 Escort Wagon]

With Hulu's catalog? I'd probably pay $20/month for ad-free viewing. My wife could watch her cop and hospital shows and we could drop the last vestiges of cable TV.

As it is, I can't stand watching Hulu - so I don't.

Re: In other words

[Anonymous Coward]

I still wouldn't accept ads. I cancelled my satellite just last week because even with DVR it's so painful. Every few minutes, press skip 8-10 times, oops missed part of the show, go back, oh there it is.

Yeah, if it was free with ads, it would be just like the broadcast TV I don't watch now.

Re: In other words

[mellon]

More to the point, I would not pay for Netflix with ads. Netflix is quite reasonably priced at the moment. If they needed to charge more to avoid using ads, I would be okay with that. Of course they could charge sufficiently more that I wouldn't be okay with it, but I don't think they need to. The whole reason I use Netflix instead of TV is that I despise ads. HBO Now's advertising before each GoT episode really pisses me off, and makes me not want to use the service.

Re: In other words

[the_Bionic_lemming]

Same here. I pay Netflix for ad free viewing.

I will stop paying for netflix when it's not ad free viewing.

Ads are meant to pay for shows. I should not be forced to pay to watch ads.

We cut the cord because of ads - not because we're willing to pay for ad free content. If comcast served up all of its content adfree - I'd jump right into comcast.

It's that simple.

Free TV can have ads.

Commercial free tv can charge for content.

This is what the consumer wants.

Re:In other words

[Darinbob]

That's probably excessive. There is no possible way that my eyeballs can generate that much revenue in a month if I were subbed to Hulu. Which is why advertisers make money, they are conning the gullible product makers into thinking that this is what ads are worth. I remember reading not too long after the masses joined the internet and the dotcom bubble started growing, that the per-view price of ads on the internet was ten times higher than that on television or newspapers. Although on the internet there is the advantage that the distribution costs are low since they piggy back on other people's ISPs.

Re:In other words

[Darinbob]

Actually I don't remember that. Cable has always had ads. All the network and local channels had ads because they never edited them out in the first place (hard to do in real time). And except for premium channels and a few others, most commercial cable channels had some ads. There were always ads on the cable premium channels too if you count the interstitial ads for their own upcoming programs (because movies never ran back to back). Even with the old satellites from the 70s you would get ads (often regional to wherever the channel was originating, and it was kind of fun seeing ads from other countries).

Granted there were not as many ads back then and they weren't as long, but they were there. And some channels held out for a very long time with only ads for their own content, and some with only ads in between programs.

Re: In other words

[Anonymous Coward]

Do they make any bluray players like that these days?

Re:In other words

[Anonymous Coward]

You were late to the party.

For the first decade of the cable rollout the only place you saw ads on cable tv were on the 'network' channels as they were the same shit you got over the air.

Everything else was 100% ad free.

Re: In other words

[Anonymous Coward]

I have the same problem with ads in my phone. I pay for 500 megs a month, why the fuck do I want my phone downloading these ads in the background? I'm paying for ads that pay someone else for me watching them; I'm paying twice.

Re:In other words

[Anonymous Coward]

I happily pay for content from a number of sources including Netflix, Amazon, etc. But someone above made the correct point: Maybe the model where the content producers pay the "talent" millions of dollars is a lost model. Maybe those ass wipes need to consider that the 99% cannot continue to support them -- i know, liberal Hollywood types don't consider themselves in the 1% while raking in millions and bitching that "teachers are underpaid blah blah blah"

Re:In other words

[Anubis IV]

Not in place of. In addition to. But guilty as charged, regardless, though I have managed to drop about 20 lbs. in the last three months, with visible results to show for it. I could still stand to lose quite a bit more, but it's a start.

Re:In other words

[Hans Lehmann]

I own some Netflix stock, and in spite of the ups & downs it's done quite well for me over the past couple of years. The day they start adding ads to their feeds, however, will tell me that it's the start of their long, slow, death spiral and I'll start unloading before long. It's a sure sign that they're no longer on the cutting edge, but rather just trying to milk the cow for as long possible before killing it.

Re:In other words

[binarybum]

Yeah, just like their heads span when people left them when they decided to both raise fees and drop all decent programming by going streaming only.

All of these moves are coldly calculated. They will win no matter what, your departure will not make anything spin I assure you. They are an essentially zero competition industry. They will become progressively more and more evil until someone else comes to market, but they have a massive head start, and I haven't even heard rumors about competition other than Amazon, but they're nowhere close.

Re: In other words

[Anonymous Coward]

It will happen the other way; current prices will go up 50% unless one obeys to watch ads served at screaming audio level.

Re: In other words

[Anonymous Coward]

You press the forward 30 seconds button a few times and then the back 7 seconds button a couple times if need be. It's not that bad. Plus most if the time it's the same number of presses.

Re: In other words

[Anonymous Coward]

They're not hurting for money. The money they made when they raised prices largely went to expand into other markets. Hence why so many people were pissed. We got less service for more money.

Re:In other words

[Imagix]

Nope, up here in Canada they've at least two direct competitors.... Showmi and CraveTV.

Re: In other words

[spire3661]

In 2011 i built a 6 tuner Windows MCE setup to capture Over-The-Air broadcasts. Since then, I have been recording all of prime time (6 channels) compressing them and uploading them to a remote site. I probably havent even looked at ANYTHING on it in over a year simply because i cant stand the commercials, even with the ability to fast forward through them. Its more of an endurance test now instead of an actual DVR someone is using.

Re:In other words

[KGIII]

That is why I do not subscribe to Hulu. I tried it for a month but still got ads so I canceled. I stopped watching television because I dislike the ads and the limited content was not justification for watching the ads. I will cancel my Netflix account if this happens to me. That was not what I agreed to when I joined right after their inception. I recall skimming (not reading all of it) their ToS and I do not recall that being subjected to ads was a part of it.

Re:In other words

[kuzb]

"Netflix, this is the quickest way you can loose customers."

Are they going to start firing them from catapults? I would be strongly against this!

Re: In other words

[KGIII]

That is bad marketing...

If the price is $10 and it is raised by 50% then the new price is $15. If they cut the new price by 50% then the new price is $7.50. People will realize this.

Re:In other words

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazon allows ads at the beginning and end of a show as well. I haven't seen it for stuff that's free on Prime yet, but I have seen it in shows that I actually bought. I bought Season 5 of Archer last year and at both ends of playback there were ads for other FX shows. Sure, the ads weren't actually placed there by Amazon, but by allowing FX to throw them on there for people who bought the show they've clearly said that it's fine by them.

The ads were removed from Season 5 after Season 6 started to air on TV, but now the folks who paid for Season 6 have the ads instead.

Re: In other words

[Anonymous Coward]

pRES pLAY, sTOP pLAY AND MOST OF THE "UNSKIPPABLE" SHIT GOES AWAY. bUT OF COURSE, WHO IS TIL WATCHING dvdS?

Sorry for caps

Re:In other words

[Anonymous Coward]

In other words, within a year or two we will be rolling out ads that you will be forced to watch before you can view the programming you pay a subscription fee for.

Well, that's fine. If that's what they want to do, it's their service to do it to.

However, if Netflix are reading this, please be aware that the single biggest reason I subscribe to your service, and not to any cable or satellite services, is because you don't have ads. You will lose my business if you start.

Re:In other words

[Anonymous Coward]

This illustrates the difference between a human mindset and a marketeers':
Human: Lets create something and make it good enough that people will want to pay for it.
Marketeer: Lets take something good that people want to pay for and ruin it just short of them leaving.

Re: In other words

[Anonymous Coward]

No because the manufacturer looses his license then. BR have a much tighter license than DVD.

Re: In other words

[jabuzz]

Or just rip all your DVD content onto a hard disk and setup a Plex/DNLA or similar server and put the DVD's in a cupboard somewhere.

Re: In other words

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhhhg I'd rather pay a couple bucks more per month than ever watch a single ad. This is a greedy move. Netflix has so many sub's even if every single one of them was at the $8 a month plan they are still drawing massive revenue ever month. There is no need for ads...and I will not stand for them. I will cancel my sub in a heartbeat.

Re: In other words

[Archangel_Azazel]

Nice streaming service you've got there. Be a shame if someone were to start running ads and muss it up, now wouldn't it? You just pay Jimmy here the extra dough every month and we'll make sure nothin' happens to ya.
-Rudy "The Transmitter" Giovanni

Re:In other words

[Wootery]

They are an essentially zero competition industry.

Nope. Not even close. NowTV, Amazon Prime Instant Video, Hulu, DVD-rental services.

Re: In other words

[AmiMoJo]

Cable has little competition. Most people can only choose one cable provider, or over the air, or maybe satellite which is probably just as shit as cable. The real danger is that we end up with only a few streaming services and they all decide to have ads, but fortunately Bittorrent will make sure that never happens.

Re: In other words

[ndavis]

More to the point, I would not pay for Netflix with ads. Netflix is quite reasonably priced at the moment. If they needed to charge more to avoid using ads, I would be okay with that. Of course they could charge sufficiently more that I wouldn't be okay with it, but I don't think they need to. The whole reason I use Netflix instead of TV is that I despise ads. HBO Now's advertising before each GoT episode really pisses me off, and makes me not want to use the service.

I'm with you on this I don't want to have to sit through ads and using HBO where they show an ad for a show which seems to be the same ad each time I watch! I'll switch to Amazon Prime and stop Netflix if they start advertising.

I mentioned this somewhere else but Netflix should have a section that includes trailers if they want people to watch the shows they are producing. Granted I bet just creating high quality content and letting people know at the top of the App will help then it will spread through Facebook and Twitter.

Re: In other words

[ndavis]

It's doubly a pain to see the same ones when binge watching.

Those are absolutely the worst. Watching the same preview the second time is almost as bad as when I pull out a years old DVD and have* to sit through ancient trailers before I can start watching the movie. By the third time I see the same preview the same day, it's worse.

*: or use a non-compliant DVD player that allows skipping this shit. Either/or.

This is why I ripped all my movies or purchased digital copies and when I rent a movie I rip it, watch it, and delete it. Typically if I want to watch it again I will buy it but the one thing I'm tired of is some movie for my kids that has a 5-10 minutes of trailers for movies they have watched or don't want to see.

Re: In other words

[Anonymous Coward]

Or watching "free" OnDemand episodes that not only still had the commercial every 10 minutes but it was the same damn commercial every damn time!

Re: In other words

[Anonymous Coward]

But if you are binge watching, having ads after instead of before means you essentially see the same number of ads -1.

Re: In other words

[Anonymous Coward]

It's doubly a pain to see the same ones when binge watching.

Those are absolutely the worst. Watching the same preview the second time is almost as bad as when I pull out a years old DVD and have* to sit through ancient trailers before I can start watching the movie. By the third time I see the same preview the same day, it's worse.

*: or use a non-compliant DVD player that allows skipping this shit. Either/or.

This made me unsubscribe from Hulu+. I like being able to watch TV shows from the networks on my own schedule, but i hated their ads; same ones over and over. I would have even put up with ads that ran normally except that I was paying for the privilege of watching a show on my TV instead of a PC.

Re: In other words

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm, no. CATV stands for Community Antenna TeleVision; it evolved because people in areas without OTA reception (i.e., valleys) put up a shared antenna to receive OTA signals.

Umm, no.

The abbreviation CATV is often used for cable television.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...

Re:In other words

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason you should pay for content is because people worked hard making that content, and you're stealing it from them, you petulant thief.

Re: In other words

[Anonymous Coward]

And that math would relevant if the post you're replying to had said "increase the price by 50%" rather than "double the price", which is what they actually said.

Re:In other words

[bev_tech_rob]

In other words, within a year or two we will be rolling out ads that you will be forced to watch before you can view the programming you pay a subscription fee for.

Then Netflix would just be Hulu. I don't mind show teasers since that lets me know what is upcoming, but once third party ads start, I'm outta there.

Re:In other words

[Anonymous Coward]

good thing they aren't showing paid advertisements then? they're going to show you stuff that is already on netflix that might be relevant to your interests (which is something they already do, but no one cries about)?

Re: In other words

[AthanasiusKircher]

Same here. I pay Netflix for ad free viewing.

I will stop paying for netflix when it's not ad free viewing.

You might. How about most of Netflix's customers?

We cut the cord because of ads

Most of the people I know having "cut to cord" yet. (I personally did long before Netflix "instant watch" even existed, but I acknowledge I'm not "most people.") Many people have Netflix, but they also keep cable -- usually because they're addicted to sports or news or particular live shows.

Those people are still used to seeing ads, and they put up with them elsewhere.

- not because we're willing to pay for ad free content.

I'm not sure I understand this. You are currently paying Netflix for "ad free content," so you seem "willing to pay for ad free content." Are you saying that you'd be unwilling to pay even a small amount more to have ad-free content? Or has Netflix maxed out its price for you?

Personally, when the option is to pay $10 to Netlfix vs. paying $50-150/month to a major cable company, guess which I'll choose? Netflix would have to raise prices quite a bit for me to go back to cable. Of course most people also are paying for cable internet anyway, but in most areas it's pretty hard to find a long-term cable plan (not some promotion) that won't cost you AT LEAST $20-30/month more than your cable internet to have TV.

So as long as Netflix has an ad-free option, I think there are a lot of people who HAVE "cut the cord" who'd be interested in paying a little more.

This is what the consumer wants.

What the consumer wants is not the highest priority for any large corporation. Small businesses who actually care about individual customers often tailor their services/products to retain their loyal customer base.

But large businesses know that they are just as "anonymous" to you as you are to them. You've obviously shown that in your post here -- you have no loyalty. You're happy to jump ship the moment something happens that you don't like.

If you have a true "personal" relationship with a business, you could complain, and they might listen.

But a large business knows that most people don't have that "personal" investment. All they care about is the most they can get away with to make a profit. If they degrade quality too much too quickly, it will drive too many customers elsewhere. But if they continue to offer a service that is cheaper and better than other big alternatives, they can keep pushing the limits to make more profits.

Netflix may have a strong and vocal community of "cord cutters" who probably also stream huge amounts of videos each month. But they also likely have a large community of people who are still using cable (and thus still see ads regularly), and those people probably don't watch Netflix nearly as much.

So -- on a balance sheet, who are they going to care about more? The people who tax their servers and demand no ads and thus cost a lot more? Or the people who are okay with some ads and don't cost them as much?

And by the way, if you don't realize the broader trend here -- the reason Netflix is developing its own content is to "lock you in." It wants you to get obsessed with its shows just as some people get (or used to get) obsessed with major network shows. Once they have enough people locked in because they need Netflix to see those shows, watch the prices slowly creep up, the ads come in, etc.... it's obviously the long-term plan.

Netflix has no obligation to give you "what consumers want." It just has to give you something either better or cheaper than alternatives so it can retain enough customers. And once major cable companies lose significant market share to streaming, the streaming services will jack up prices just as the cable companies did in the past.

Re:In other words

[neurovish]

Yeah, just like their heads span when people left them when they decided to both raise fees and drop all decent programming by going streaming only.

All of these moves are coldly calculated. They will win no matter what, your departure will not make anything spin I assure you. They are an essentially zero competition industry. They will become progressively more and more evil until someone else comes to market, but they have a massive head start, and I haven't even heard rumors about competition other than Amazon, but they're nowhere close.

Their heads were spinning for a few quarters after that. The stock tanked and took awhile to recover. Although that just means that if they can weather a few terrible quarters, then people will eventually return. The competition is starting to increase dramatically with HBO Go, so maybe there is hope yet.

Re: In other words

[RavenLrD20k]

Doubling the current price is not raising it by 50% (ie you're paying 150% of what you were before). Doubling means you're paying 200%, so if you're paying $10 and they double it you're now paying $20. They would then cut that by 50% and bring you back to the 10%.

Re:In other words

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Thank you.

Netflix, just tell us how much god damned money to pay to not have any fucking ads.

Re:In other words

[onthemightofprinces]

This is ridiculous. First the studios force us to watch anti-piracy ads on the DVDs we buy, and sometimes trailers for the crappy films they wanna hock to us too. Now Netflix wants me to endure adverts despite paying the fact that I don't have adverts. It's like they actively want me to pirate stuff... know where you don't get anti-piracy ads and crap....

Re:In other words

[Rasperin]

"Doubt it" No seriously, I do. We (slashdot, internet collective) piss and moan and claim we will run for the hills all the time but really it's convenient for the masses. You might leave, but will it really hurt them? No. They might lose thousands but doubtfully much more than that due to the fact that before all else convenience reigns supreme. Hell, millions of Americans still subscribe to cable tv for no other reason than it's convenient.

Re: In other words

[AvitarX]

No, because they put up press play to start next episode over the end.

Re:In other words

[jjbenz]

Just like the cable industry did.

Re: In other words

[Anonymous Coward]

I look at it the same as HBO for example. You pay a subscription for this service for the premium content it offers. Before and after every movie or TV episode, HBO runs a promo for its other content (original content at that, not leased content), as they have for many years. They have yet, to my knowledge, to allow third-party advertisements.

Re: In other words

[KGIII]

10 + 5 is not doubling the price. Get a math teacher and read my post again. Have them help you.

Re: In other words

[KGIII]

D'oh! Somehow I read it as raising the price 50%.

Re: In other words

[Obfuscant]

The only advertisements cable tv providers put on the content are in slots called "local avails" -- locally available ad slots. It's why you can see an ad for a local company on a national cable service. If the cable company didn't use that time, you're going to see a national ad from the content provider anyway.

Re: In other words

[RavenLrD20k]

Yeah... you were talking about raising by 50% when the previous poster was talking about raising it by 100% (otherwise known as doubling.) Sorry. You seemed confused about what was being said in the post you initially replied to.

Re:In other words

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. What a sense of entitlement some people have. They leech all their media and think watching a couple commercials is tantamount to torture.

Re:In other words

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why I DVR shows that I know I can access onDemand. Fucking Comcast locks down the fast forward on certain networks' shows, but they still force fucking ads into their onDemand content. Fox is particularly heinous about this. Fucking dicks.

Re: In other words

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that was his point?

Re:In other words

[Anonymous Coward]

the reason the actors ask for so much is because the movie companies are making tons of cash. same with pro athletes. if the companies weren't making so much money off of them, they'd probably be fine with less.

Re:In other words

[sixsixtysix]

yeah the 4 minutes of adds for a 45 minute show is so not worth it. /sarcasm. seriously, the ondemand ads are far better than live tv ads any day.

Re: In other words

[Anonymous Coward]

ewww. who watches sd content nowadays?

Re: In other words

[sixsixtysix]

or worse, when they're ads for the show you are currently watching. usa was notorious for that.

Re:In other words

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it was a rape joke.

Actually, I think it was a typo, but it could be a rape joke, couldn't it?

Re: In other words

[Montezumaa]

A few months back, while visiting my parents(and spending three week with them), my mother and I started "binge watching" Hulu. About an hour after we started, my sister, her husband, and my niece came over and joined in watching various shows. After approximately four hours, I had to different commercials "seared" into my brain. One was Hulu's "You Know You Wanna" commercial(s)(I guess there is more than one, but the same exact version played on each show, and at each break, I know I wanna beat the shit out of the person that created that commercial, then thought it should be played on every fucking break, during every fucking video), set to a song titled "Electric Love"(the course makes the title obvious). The other commercial "starred" some ugly "fatty", talking about a "serious condition, called, and I shit you not, B.E.D.(Binge Eating Disorder, because, fuck, we need to refer to real and/or imagined medical conditions by acronyms, not words). After those four irritating, mind fucking hours, I start bashing death metal music during Hulu's own commercial, and started to berate the ugly fatty, telling her to put down the cream puffs, HoHo, and hotdogs, get her ass out of bed(goddamn, that acronym is just fully of hilarious ironies). I starting to think someone at Hulu was fucking with us.

Point is, that shit alone is why my Hulu Plus(or Hulu+, or whatever it's "official title is) account has been canceled, and why, if Netflix starts putting ads anywhere before, within, or at the end of any served streaming videos, I will also cancel my Netflix account(or, rather, stop paying for it). I am not going to pay because Netflix failed to negotiate an acceptable deal, which let Netflix avoid serving commercials to end users, or increasing recurring fees(I realize that last point is of no concern to the discussion at hand, but that is the second reason that will lead me to cancel my Netflix account).

Why do more and more companies believe they have the right to make us sit through forced commercials, after we have paid an agreed to fee to access whatever content or service that was purchased? The point of commercials and other advertisements is to offset the loss of a payment( or payments, if the service is recurring over a specified time, and set as an "all you can consume"-style service) directly from the content consumer(s), but having advertiser(s) pay for the consumers' content, and reach whatever intent audience the advertiser(s) want(i.e free content for watching ads, or viewing static ad banners, screens, headers, etc).

Re: In other words

[AvitarX]

I'd like to see the contracts Hulu has, I always kinda hoped the subscription covers their cost of running, and the ads cover their payments out. They certainly have a lot more content on presumably far less money than netflix.

I wish I could watch the movies without all the damned ads (and as you say, all four of them), and I don't want to watch Hulu+ ads on Hulu+.

They also pull the same BS as on demand, where if you get into a show late into the season, you miss the beginning, that's probably my biggest gripe, I expect to go through all the Criterion Collection movies I want to see, then cancel them and get HBO Now.

The Hulu movie selection really is quite good, I wouldn't mind suffering money making ads if that's how they get the library, but the self advertising to something I am paying for is just upsetting.

What I really don't get is why it's so hard for them to sell ads, everyone I know paying for Hulu+ has disposable income, and they should be able to target much better than they do.

Or do those shitty buy now deals that the cable networks do late night, there has to be enough of them to spread the advertising out a little, and those are usually simply paid with commission.

They also need to stop advertising shows they won't have (Oats and Garfunkel for example).

Re:In other words

[Anonymous Coward]

In other words, within a year or two we will be rolling out ads that you will be forced to watch before you can view the programming you pay a subscription fee for.

Watch free hulu, after you drown in ads, go back to your financial institution and stop payment to netflix if you want. I doubt any video or movie will be chopped up by inserted ads.Although promotions of things to come may play when movies are queued up, they still have a dvd service. Cheaper at half the price than Redbox. Every show I care about is on Netflix. It's good to be old. I remember tin foil, coat hangers, And more commercials, than actual programing. Netflix is slowly increasing our attention span past the collective seven minutes. I am losing you, right about now.

Re:In other words

[vilanye]

Yeah, just like their heads span when people left them when they decided to both raise fees and drop all decent programming by going streaming only

When did this happen? They still offer DVD's by mail and the last quarterly report that I looked at, admittedly about two years ago, DVD's by mail generated more revenue and had a much higher profit margin. something like 8 times more profitable.

When they announced that they were going to spin off DVD's, their stock went from ~300 to ~50 in a short period of time, so they nixed that stupid idea in a hurry.

I'm experimenting with a NAS

[Anonymous Coward]

Have Plex and pirate all my movies and TV shows. Now I can watch whatever I want, without commercials, forever.

It will probably tip me over

[Anonymous Coward]

to Amazon prime, who seem to have a better selection anyway (grass is always greener etc) I'd have gone allready if only their business practices weren't so shitty.

Re:It will probably tip me over

[Nartie]

I just cancelled Amazon prime. I can tolerate their business practices, but now they are showing adds on Prime Video. Right now it's just a few, but this sort of thing always gets worse. If Netflix insists on showing ads I guess it's back to torrents. Sigh.

Exactly.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck that. If I pay a fee, I don't want any ads. Don't treat me like shit if you want my money.

They can get away with it only because of the lack of competition.

Re:Exactly.

[Anonymous Coward]

Then it's time to set up some competition.... Sounds like a business opportunity.. Good luck though.

Re:Exactly.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not fucking entitlement, it's recognizing what you're paying for. ADS for a PAID SERVICE is DOUBLE DIPPING. Full stop. Cable is just as scummy, and the only reason the companies get away with it is that TV is a widespread addiction stronger than heroin.

Re:Exactly.

[ArchieBunker]

Maybe because the original intent of cable tv was you paid a subscription which pays for the shows. No advertisements needed. The big networks still broadcast over the air for free. If you bring in advertising then you clearly don't need my subscription costs.

Re:Exactly.

[0100010001010011]

cable tv you see ads.

You know Cable TV started on the premise of "no ads", right? Now they have nothing but ad channels. The 80s were a glorious, ad free, time all supported by your monthly payment.

Re:Exactly.

[OhPlz]

Angry bro because it's a pay service and their customers would be paying for ads they're forced to watch and do not want. Just because advertising has infected other mediums, doesn't mean that advertisers are entitled to infect everything.

Re:Exactly.

[EmeraldBot]

I cannot comprehend this entitled attitude. on cable tv you see ads. in a magazine or newspaper you see ads. before movies you see ads. during movies you see ad placements. so it's not like Netflix is proposing a crazy new concept, to show you an ad even though you pay a subscription. why so angry bro?

I wouldn't want to see ads on TV either; it's the big reason that a lot of people (myself included) switched away from regular TV service. In a magazine or a newspaper, I can easily skip right over those ads, and they tend to actually be useful services in the case of a newspaper - plus, I don't have to see the same one over and over again. During a movie theater is ridiculous, and I don't often go to them for that reason (aside from the outrageous concessions pricing).

Just because everyone does it doesn't make it right. The difference though is that the other methods aren't so obnoxious and atmosphere-breaking, and tend to be more informational. The exception is Cable TV, and like I said, I wouldn't touch that with a meter length pole. Especially not given that it's many times the price of a Netflix subscription...

Re:Exactly.

[Anonymous Coward]

Its not an "entitled" attitude! It is an attitude that I don't like to pay a fee for a service and then watch adds on that service. Thats double dipping in my book, and I will not support it! I dropped cable TV partly because of the ads, and partly because of the lack of quality content. It IS crazy for Netflix to start running ads, as I and many others will drop Netflix like a hot potato! The reason that I dropped Hulu+ before the end of the free trial was because of the commercials. One of the reasons that I have stuck with Netflix is the lack of ads! Oh, and I am NOT your bro!!!!!

Re:Exactly.

[HairyNevus]

Magazines and newspapers have ads so they can remain dirt cheap (which they need to do to ensure high viewership [of the ads...]). Also, those ads don't block the actual content, you just flip the page. Movie trailers (previews) are totally fine, and part of the movie-going experience. I do think car commercials and the like played on the big screen before a film is bullshit and one of the reasons I don't go as often as I used to. Commercials between T.V. shows is another fact of life, but not on HBO or Showtime etc. That's what this is most like, but right now since it's just previews for Netflix originals it's not much worse than HBO previewing their other shows for 20seconds before streaming on HBO GO*.

*which is actually really stupid. I'm going to watch all of your new shows when you release them, that's why I fucking subscribe!

Re:Exactly.

[countSudoku()]

He's got a point; "why adverts in a stream of media I'm paying for?" Not entitled at all. I take the same stance. If I'm paying for media, I do not expect to see adverts, however, yes, they do inject them into my pay-for Dish subscription, along with some shitty channels I did not ask for. Easy enough to fix in these ways; DVR FWD through the adverts, sound kill the adverts and then do not pay attention to them, and my favorite switch to another source during adverts scheduled on my live show. For channels, I just do not add them to my custom guide, then when I see the trolls at the electronic stores asking me to "save big by switching to their dubious service" I ask this question; where are my al la carte channels? This usually shuts them down cold. The channel packages are the shit they push, and they are anti-consumer by not letting us pick the channels we wish to subscribe to. It's a fucking con job. So, I choose to avoid all their adverts AND reserve the fair use right to copy my media down to another device that I manage. Not some fucking corporate media overlords.

I don't know of one sane person who thinks advertising is worth the millions of $$ that companies spend on it. Consider this; if there were no adverts would you still be able to discover new products to purchase? Of COURSE you would! I find new shit on Amazon every time I visit! No one needs to force feed me any adverts for this to occur. In fact I go out of my way to boycott products I find too often in my media stream. Period. I adblock right at the consumer level. Other than lawyers, advertising people are the lowest forms of scum in this sector. Fucking useless air-wasters, every single one of them.

Re:Exactly.

[Mr. Slippery]

I cannot comprehend this entitled attitude. on cable tv you see ads. in a magazine or newspaper you see ads. before movies you see ads. during movies you see ad placements. so it's not like Netflix is proposing a crazy new concept

I cannot comprehend this apathy about the ongoing invasion of every bit of space and time by attempts at mind control. ("Buy! Buy! Buy!")

Once upon a time you actually could pick up some magazines and see very few ads, or even none at all. There were not ads before movies. Product placement was inconspicuous or non-existent. There was even less ad time on broadcast TV -- one guy estimates that the time spent on commercials more than doubled since the 1950s.

Ads as we know them are memetic toxins. Anyone unconcerned about them is unconcerned about their own mind.

Re:Exactly.

[Noah Haders]

it's not necessarily double dipping. it could be half dipping for the subscription fee, half dipping for the ads. In total there is one full dip.

This is how magazines have been for 100 years, whether you buy them with a subscription or at the newsstand. Over time, a rich industry developed around this half/half dipping approach that resulted in a rich variety of content for people. you could get a fishing magazine, a mag on woodworking, on concrete, Indiana news, everything could work.

it's not an interently evil business model, it's just another business model.

Re:Exactly.

[jmccue]

Wish I had mod points -- That was the whole point of cable, I am old enough to remember the adverts on over the air TV stating that fact. I guess it was only a matter of time for the 'alternatives' to start ads, took longer that I thought. And the cable companies wonder why young people avoids TV :)

Re:Exactly.

[Noah Haders]

Consider this; if there were no adverts would you still be able to discover new products to purchase? Of COURSE you would! I find new shit on Amazon every time I visit! No one needs to force feed me any adverts for this to occur.

Umm, the reason companies pay for ads is so you discover _their_ products and services, not the ones that amazon shows you. And hint hint, amazon is showing you what they want to influence your purchase of specific items, just like an ad does. As far as I know, amazon does this to boost their own revenue, but nothing is stopping them from letting companies pay for placement...

Re:Exactly.

[Registered Coward v2]

I cannot comprehend this entitled attitude. on cable tv you see ads. in a magazine or newspaper you see ads. before movies you see ads. during movies you see ad placements. so it's not like Netflix is proposing a crazy new concept, to show you an ad even though you pay a subscription. why so angry bro?

Perhaps, but I subscribe because I get ad free programing. if they want to show ads thats fine, I'll just move on to something else. I'm not angry, just voting with the wallet.

Re:Exactly.

[Anonymous Coward]

(aside from the outrageous concessions pricing)

I gotta throw it out there: your movie ticket went to the movie. 100%. The concession money is the only money the theater keeps to pay wages, upkeep, etc. Hence the massive markup.

Re:Exactly.

[innocent_white_lamb]

Actually, no. The movie company generally gets anywhere between 50-70% of the price that you paid for the ticket, depending on the newness and popularity of the movie.

(I own and operate a movie theatre.)

Re:Exactly.

[tompaulco]

cable tv you see ads.

You know Cable TV started on the premise of "no ads", right? Now they have nothing but ad channels. The 80s were a glorious, ad free, time all supported by your monthly payment.

Yes, it was ad-free and it cost less than 1/5th of what it does now. They must be enjoying some seriously crazy profits after bumping the price up 500% AND charging the advertisers.

Re:Exactly.

[Anonymous Coward]

Bu...bu...but...but.... muh money on the table!!

Re:Exactly.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not and never was true. Were you even alive in the 80's? The ad free part of cable were the premium movie channels. Everything else had commercials.

Re:Exactly.

[jdavidb]

so it's not like Netflix is proposing a crazy new concept, ... why so angry bro?

I'd say nobody's ever served by having an angry outburst, but certainly those of us who have been enjoying adfree netflix viewing are bothered by the idea of ads being inserted. This is clearly a decrease in value and for many of us it may be enough to prompt us to look for alternatives.

Re:Exactly.

[ShaunC]

I haven't paid for a magazine or newspaper subscription in at least 10 years. Companies like Mercury Magazines and FreeBizMag exist to put eyeballs onto print magazines and papers. Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, Field & Stream, Flying, I get those for free and have had various others over the years. In exchange, I encounter a few easily-skipped ads for Viagra, Harbor Freight, Sporty's, and Dr. Winnifred Cutler's Athena human pheromone love potion. I used to get the WSJ tossed into my yard every morning for free as well, but found I didn't have the time to read it, so I cancelled.

I wouldn't pay to get any of those with ads. I might pay to get them without, but they don't offer such an option, they sold their souls to advertising.

Re:Exactly.

[lordofthechia]

Just because advertising has infected other mediums, doesn't mean that advertisers are entitled to infect everything.

Leela: Didn't you have ads in the 21st century?

Fry: Well sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio, and in magazines, and movies, and at ball games... and on buses and milk cartons and t-shirts, and bananas and written on the sky. But not in dreams, no siree.

Re:Exactly.

[93 Escort Wagon]

No, you are incorrect.

Back in the 80s my favorite channel was American Movie Classics (AMC to you young'uns). Back then all they did was show Classic movies, ad-free. The host, Bob Dorian, would usually lead in with some interesting behind-the-scenes story about the making of the movie, its stars, or sometimes about the time period when the film was made. They would sometimes have an intermission halfway through, where they might give you the schedule for when a particular movie was going to play during the week... or maybe they'd mention how it was Gary Cooper week and list all the movies they'd be showing. I suppose you could call those house ads - but that was the extent of their "advertising".

I still have several boxes containing VHS tapes that, at one time, contained ad-free movies I'd taped off of AMC.

Man, I loved that channel.

Re:Exactly.

[93 Escort Wagon]

I forgot to mention AMC was part of the base cable package at the time - we didn't pay extra for it.

Re:Exactly.

[Darinbob]

They have competition. Hulu-plus has ads, and a lot of people went to Netflix instead for that reason. There's Amazon, I'd never touch it myself but I know people who swear by it (mostly those already addicts to online shopping so that they think it's free). I even know people using iTunes for this, but like Google Play that's really a separate market and is pay-per-show rather than a subscription service.

Re:Exactly.

[Noah Haders]

You know, I can agree with this, especially interstitial ads that break the flow of the show (note that is all of broadcast and cable TV). You know your preferences, and you shop as an informed consumer. I think the impetus for my earlier comment was the entitled attitude.

Re:Exactly.

[Anonymous Coward]

You know Cable TV started on the premise of "no ads", right?

Not at all.

Cable TV started to deliver high-quality signals and more channels than you could get over-the-air with a rabbit ear antenna. The ads that were already there on the tv channels remained.

Re:Exactly.

[Darinbob]

I can skip ads in a magazine or newspaper; those make it into the recycling or compost first thing. Movies before ads are annoying, which is why you should arrive later than the starting time.

It is a crazy concept to break your business model and piss off your fans. It costs the viewers actual money to receive those advertisements, we don't get our internet bandwidth for free. We're not freeloaders here, we're paying for this service. There is no entitlement attitude but we do want to get our money's worth, if it turns out it's no longer worth it then we will unsubscribe. I suspect many would be happy paying an extra two dollars a month to avoid the ads. (and seriously, if advertisers can make that much money per viewer and my eyeballs are that valuable then I'll watch extra ads all day long if I can get some kickbacks, but as it is the advertisers are instead freeloading off of me)

Re:Exactly.

[Darinbob]

And Netflix streaming exists for the most part from customers who cut the cord and dropped their cable and satellite. They should remember that their customers are already a fickle bunch.

Re:Exactly.

[Darinbob]

I don't think it was the only reason, but it was certainly one of the reasons many people got cable. However in many locales there was not good broadcast coverage and you had an extremely limited selection of programs to watch. Local or network TV on cable always had ads, because the cable companies never cut them out. It was only some of the extra cable-only channels that started off without ads.

Re:Exactly.

[mellon]

Noah, what it is is simply a different service. I subscribe to Netflix because I can watch stuff I want to watch without having to sit through ads. Full stop. That's the service I'm buying. If Netflix starts pushing ads, they have stopped selling the service I want to buy. If they jack up the price without ads, and it's not an unreasonable hike, I'll pay it, because I like the current service. And you are wrong that ads aren't an inherently evil business model. They very much are: the point is to get you to do something that is against your interests. It's like when you ask a girl if she wants to go out with you, and she says no, and you keep asking her hoping she'll give in. Not cool.

Re:Exactly.

[Darinbob]

And there was a time when the host of the television show knew every single one of their sponsors and would acknowledge them all. Today they don't know, though on tv still there's generally an exec in charge of advertising who should know them all. In the internet, they don't know. The wannabe journalists don't know which ads are going to show up on their web pages, they're randomized by whatever third party service they sold their soul to ("you give me money and I let you put crap on my web site and diminish my good name").

Re:Exactly.

[Verminator]

I'm not your friend, buddy!

Re:Exactly.

[Anonymous Coward]

No kidding. I have UVERSE now, and they are the worse, way worse than DirecTV that I used to have. I went through the channel list to delete channels out of my list that I did not want, and I crap you not, there were over 40 channels (SD + HD combined) that were pure, unadulterated ads. There were the normal ones, like QVC, and HSN, but then UVerse also has 24hr infomercial channels as well, and to top it off even worse, there are dedicated channels to specific name brand products, like the "Lexus" channel or some BS similar. Tons of them.

Once you take those out, and then take out all the foreign language channels (Yes I'm talking about the 2 dozen or more Spanish speaking channels that I have to pay for even though I don't speak Spanish, and they have an additional Spanish package you can subscribe to also so I don't know why they are in the normal package and not the special Spanish package). Since I don't watch sports, I removed ESPN1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8... as well. I think I ended up with about 40 channels, tops (with those 40 channels being duplicated in SD and HD). So I'm on a U200 package, that gets 200 channels, and only about a 25% of them are even "normal programming" channels. Ridiculous that I have to pay a monthly fee for so little content, and the priveledge to get bombarded by all these ads and commercials.

Re:Exactly.

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no point in arguing with people on Slashdot. They have their own reality. One day someone foolishly said "I thought the point of cable was that you were paying for the channels and so there shouldn't be ads" and everyone realized they liked that idea, and so it became the new reality. Same way they retroactively changed the original meaning of the word "hacker." Lots of them now remember it referring to incredibly skilled people some 30 to 40 years ago, even if they didn't remember it ten years ago before reading about it on Slashdot.

If you really want to fuck with them, just ask for a citation. Surely if these rumors are true, someone can post a VHS recording of this wonderful ad-free cable on YouTube, or perhaps post some scans of text from the 70s referring to non-criminal hackers. ...but, no, these truths exist not in reality, but in Slashdot's collective imagination, so we'll never see any hard evidence.

Re:Exactly.

[VanessaE]

You're right of course about the sentiment regarding ads versus paying for the service. And yes, cable companies are scum. Can't say I agree with TV being more addictive than heroin, however:

It's not fucking entitlement, it's recognizing what you're paying for

It is *precisely* an entitlement, by definition:

http://www.merriam-webster.com...

"the condition of having a right to have, do, or get something"

You are using the "so-and-so has a sense of entitlement" definition of the word, and with the same negative connotation as some use when describing various social programs. Like those social programs, you paid for the service and therefore are entitled to it.

Re:Exactly.

[Whiteox]

That kind of interstitial ads you speak of actually stuffs up the show you are watching which are now designed with recaps! So now you are reminded of what you were watching before the ads because the ads are way too long. Recently I've seen shows cut at inappropriate moments just for ad placement. Sometimes the show has been cut for length so it can fit into a time slot.
I tell you what. You keep watching your ad based content and I for one will shun them. I don't need any of the shit they are trying to sell. There is enough product placement out there that they can avoid infesting series/movies/docos with repetitive, hateful and pointless crap.

Re:Exactly.

[Whiteox]

Last time I'll respond to you. I asked my wife just now and gave her a good practical example. She who will be obeyed responded by saying - 'It's ok to have ads at the beginning and end of shows, but as a CEO, I would want my products to be exposed as many times as I could for the amount of money I'm spending." Heatedly she added "But there are other ways of exposure like magazines, newspapers, billboards, blimps with flashing ads and even hiring someone to walk up and down the street wearing sandwich boards."
So there you have it Noah. She has spoken.

Re:Exactly.

[chihowa]

It's like when you ask a girl if she wants to go out with you, and she says no, and you keep asking her hoping she'll give in. Not cool.

It's like when you ask a girl if she wants to go out with you, and she says no, and so you hire a team of psychologists to help you manipulate her into saying yes.

It's not really any less creepy when ad companies do it to get you to part with your money.

Re:Exactly.

[Pubstar]

Should also note that Cartoon Network was ad-free when it launched. I remember watching it when I was younger with zero ads. When the main program was over, they had some sort of filler cartoon to fill the empty time to the next timeslot.

Re:Exactly.

[Pubstar]

I was always under the impression that the release weekend was like 90%+ royalty to the studios.

Re:Exactly.

[radarskiy]

a) I never heard this claim at the time.
b) For cable retransmission of a broadcast signal it doesn't even help since you still have to leave the time where the ads would have been played for those receiving the signal via broadcast. Only once you have individual streams can you just continue playing the content.

Re:Exactly.

[Anonymous Coward]

i don't have cable, read magazines, or read the paper. i don't watch movies with "ad placements". fuck off.

Re:Exactly.

[Mitreya]

The 80s were a glorious, ad free, time all supported by your monthly payment.

I am not sure if this is true, but if you do look at some sitcoms from 70s, you would discover that half-hour sitcoms used to be 26-27 minutes of content. Today's sitcoms would be lucky to hit 23 minutes (usually ~22.5)

Re:Exactly.

[Anonymous Coward]

AMC followed this model until the mid to late 1990s.

Now, other than a few of its original shows, it's a shithole.

TCM still follows this model.

Re:Exactly.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup. That's the way it was here in Slusher's Gulch, back in the Sixties. No extra advertising on Cable.
It was a Co-op. You paid $50 to get the Cable run, and $5 every couple of months. You also got a voting Share on how the Co-Operative was run.
We had eight broadcast, and one local channel. The Local Channel, at least for the first decade, consisted of a camera panning across a bunch of weather instruments.
Community Access started around 1975, which was short programs produced mostly by local High School students, and a few genuine Loons.
By 1980, our Parents had moved out, abandoning us for the Wicked City Life, and Cable was up to 10 channels and $8.50 every couple of months.
If you wanted anything other than what Cable offered, you got a big honking Satellite Dish in the backyard.
The Co-Op had neither the funds or the interest in expanding programming, so we had a meeting, and sold the Co-Operative to Cablevision. Each Share got a couple of months of free service.
And then, the fees doubled. Yes, we got TBS and CNN, and then they ran out of channels. For MTV and other stuff, you had to rent a "Cable Box" for $1.50 a month, which brought the fee up to an even $10 every month. For a while.
Our little Co-Oprerative changed hands five times over the next 25 years. And every Evil that Cable could do, it did do.
Comcast, the last Rotten Bastard, didn't even offer Internet, until a little Cable outfit called Astound came in. The Law is quite complicated on this issue; there are several lawsuits stewing. But it turns out that Comcast does not have a Monopoly on stringing Cable here, because our original little Co-op never bothered to get permission in the first place.
I've got Basic "Basic Service" from Astound, which technically means local Service only, but Astound is a little careless in siting their Channels, so such channels as Velocity and AMC sneak in anyway. I also have 25/down Internet. All for _less_ than I was paying Comcast for Cable TV only, back in 2008. (The AT&T DSL I had at that time sucked, and they eventually backed out of their claim that DSL was available here, and after yet another lawsuit, I got a $300 refund.)
I should like to point out that I have never used a "Cable Box" for TV.

I don't know where this Myth got started that Cable TV initially promised No Advertising. I defy anybody to show me such a claim in any of the Print or Broadcast media of the era. Certain _Channels_ like Bravo had no Advertising at first, but they never promised that this situation would continue.

The utter disaster that the Telecommunications Act of 1996 created will take decades to clear up. Before then, local Broadcasters would pay a nominal fee to be carried on Cable Systems; this increased their Audience without any equipment expense.
Now they are demanding that the Cable Operators pay _them_, often preposterous sums.

In 1990, my Parents moved back to Ireland. Their new 250 year-old cottage had Cable service for 5 Punt a' month, in cash. The Relay Station was on top of Sugarloaf, and powered by Automobile batteries, which had to be changed out when the BBC got too fuzzy or the 2 Meter Repeater died.
"Illegal" as Hell, and nobody cared, not even RTE, which had finally put in Phone lines only a couple of decades back, and couldn't care less if some people in the Boonies wished to "Pirate" the BBC.

Re:Exactly.

[Anonymous Coward]

it's not necessarily double dipping. it could be half dipping for the subscription fee, half dipping for the ads. In total there is one full dip.

Price is not determined by the cost of production but the cost the the customer is willing to bear. Advertising is usually a way to scam people into paying more than they think they are.

This is how magazines have been for 100 years, whether you buy them with a subscription or at the newsstand. Over time, a rich industry developed around this half/half dipping approach that resulted in a rich variety of content for people. you could get a fishing magazine, a mag on woodworking, on concrete, Indiana news, everything could work.

it's not an interently evil business model, it's just another business model.

Classified advertising is very different from unsolicited advertising. Particularly entertainment advertising which is about as useless as it gets given the number of alternatives available now. Unskippable advertising is also very different from paper ad.

And no, it's not "just another business model". It's a way to pay twice over; once in time and attention and twice in increased price of the product to pay for the ad.

Re:Exactly.

[FlyHelicopters]

I don't know where this Myth got started that Cable TV initially promised No Advertising. I defy anybody to show me such a claim in any of the Print or Broadcast media of the era. Certain _Channels_ like Bravo had no Advertising at first, but they never promised that this situation would continue.

It isn't a myth, I remember it... (yea, I'm old)

Cable more than 30 years ago largely had no ads on it. That changed over time, but I remember watching back in the early 80s, almost no ads.

Re:Exactly.

[FlyHelicopters]

Cable wasn't promising no adds on broadcast TV, it was the cable only channels that would be ad free.

I remember in the 80s, watching movies on the Disney Channel, no ads...

I miss those days...

Re:Exactly.

[LaurenCates]

I'm not your buddy, guy!

Re:Exactly.

[IhateMonkeys]

Then you also remember when TBS/TNT started their programs at :05 and :35.
Which meant that when you changed channels to any other station, you missed the first 5 minutes of that program.

Re:Exactly.

[Anonymous Coward]

"It isn't a myth, I remember it... (yea, I'm old)"

I'm sorry, but you are sort of missing the point, and have been suckered into the Myth.
There were Cable _Channels_ that once had no ads, like Bravo. There were Channels that always did have ads, like TBS and CNN. There were also _Premium_ Channels that made a point of not having ads and having original content, like HBO, that cost extra. Most Local Stations had Advertising, even PBS.
Again, the Cable _Industry_ never promised that by ditching your antennae and going Cable, you would be able to escape advertising. For one thing, if they strip out advertising, what do you put in its place. Test Patterns? (Time shifting was horribly expensive in the Sixties, and impossible in the Fifties. The first Regulated Cable Systems went on-air in 1948.)
You've got the whole Internet at hand; go ahead, prove me mistaken.

"Cable more than 30 years ago largely had no ads on it."
You are just wrong. Maybe by then, you were already inured, or your Parents tightly controlled what you watched. Maybe you just watched the NY Met on Bravo, or CSPAN. But Kids Programming got so bloated with Advertising that Congress had to step in, in 1990, with the Children's Television Act, which limited Advertising to 12 minutes out of every 60, and to make Advertising distinct from Content.

Re:Exactly.

[edawstwin]

I was always under the impression that the release weekend was like 90%+ royalty to the studios.

When I managed a theater (20ish years ago so it may have changed), some of the bigger movies got a 70/90 release. 70% of the box office up to a certain number ($10,000, for example), went to the distributor, and then 90% of anything above $10,000 also went to the distributor. This lasted for 1-4 weeks, depending on how big the release was. After that it dropped every week or two, eventually hitting 35%, where it stayed for the rest of the run. And if the movie did really poorly at 35%, you still owed the distributor a minimum, which I think was $150. Again, this was a while ago, so some of this may have changed, but I doubt that there's been a radical overhaul.

Re:Exactly.

[jjbenz]

I remember those days, it was awesome indeed.

Re:Exactly.

[Pubstar]

Well that's good to know. I was always told that if I wanted to really support my local movie theater, I needed to go 3 weeks or so after release so they got the most money for the film. It also helps that Im not super broke anymore so I can spend $20 on two drinks and some popcorn.

But then again, every movie I've gone and seen recently has been pretty terrible. I saw Chapie when it came out, and fuck that movie had a plothole you could drive a semi through. I even like Die Antwoord too. They didnt even save it.

Re:Exactly.

[93 Escort Wagon]

Then you also remember when TBS/TNT started their programs at :05 and :35.

Which meant that when you changed channels to any other station, you missed the first 5 minutes of that program.

Yeah, that was bloody annoying. Nowadays with DVRs it wouldn't be as big a deal; but I only had one VCR so it did screw things up sometimes.

Re:Exactly.

[Anonymous Coward]

As one AC to Another:
"There's no point in arguing with people on Slashdot. They have their own reality. One day someone foolishly said "I thought the point of cable was that you were paying for the channels and so there shouldn't be ads" and everyone realized they liked that idea, and so it became the new reality. "

I wonder if all these posts saying how wonderful Ad Free Cable was in the Eighties all come from the same person...

As I remember it from the early Eighties, when I was in my mid Twenties, in a West Coast Suburb:
All Local Channels- Ads if they were there originally.
Shopping Channels- 100% Ads.
Religious Channels- 100% Ads
Superstations- They all started out with Ads. Watching all the Chicago restaurant ads on WGN could be funny.
ARTS/A&E- Ads between programs, usually for VHS tapes. ARTS has been resurrected as Ad-Free, under the sole sponsorship of the Estate of Lloyd Rigler, and is well worth seeking out.
Bravo- No Ads, but a fair amount of "Sponsorship" Promos. Gone to Hell In A Handbasket after a decade or so, like A&E
MTV/VH1- Ads.
Discovery- Don't know. We didn't get all those original Canadian programs. Now it's all awful.
Kids Channels- As I pointed out in an earlier post, Congress enacted The Children's Television Act in 1990, because the Ads were out of control. Some Headspace Cases here continue to claim that there were no Ads. They are wrong. (They may be right about Disney; we didn't get Disney.)
CSPAN- No Ads.
CNN/HLN- Ads from the very beginning.
Premium- No Ads, although the PPV Channels were rife with Promos between the occasion Programs.
Community Access- Ads. But very few because it wasn't worth the effort and funds.
Movie Stations- Usually part of a "Premium" Package. No Ads on TCM or AMC back then. These Networks were very cheap to run, with access to decent Film Libraries. (We only got AMC on Basic in ~2006, and have never had TCM.)
TWC- Ads. Our Local Station was so gloriously FU, that it was a crapshoot whether they even got the right State.

Well, that covers all of the Local Cable lineup in the Eighties; I may have left something out.

"If you really want to fuck with them, just ask for a citation."
Yeah, I've been doing this for years. Never a reply, which is why I suspect An Agenda.
Thank you for your Response.

Re:Exactly.

[antdude]

Netflix's era is pretty short compared to cable TV's. Maybe Netflix should have an ad-free (paid) and ad (no paying) services.

Re:Exactly.

[omfgnosis]

It's not an entitlement. The difference is "having a right" versus "being willing to pay".

I don't have a right to have anyone perform for me, but I certainly can decide whether or not I'm willing to pay for a performance. If the available performances don't match my expectations, they may not make a sale. They are not entitled to my purchase.

Re:Exactly.

[omfgnosis]

Thanks for the correction, chum...p.

Re:Exactly.

[mellon]

Ouch. Good point.

Re:Exactly.

[Anonymous Coward]

It was the mid 80s when they did the switch over. At first it was 'only between shows to help subsidize the costs'. Think that lasted about 6 months before they went hog wild. It was not even all that hard. 80% of the material they had was already cut for it and had the commercial breaks built in :(

Pay for Ads is here to stay

[Anonymous Coward]

I fondly remember when a selling point of having cable TV was that there were no ads.

I remember when...

[linear a]

Ah ... I remember when cable TV started putting ads in. Didn't turn out pretty.

Re:I remember when...

[Greyfox]

Yeah, their original argument was "By paying for Cable, advertising will be eliminated!" Then we ended up paying for cable AND having advertising.

Re:I remember when...

[Technician]

Many of that generation have already cut the cable. High price and ads is causing retention issues in this age of internet choices.

No

[Imagix]

Just, no. Slippery slope. It starts with ads for it's own stuff. Followed by ads from "selected" partners. I've paid my subscription fee. No ads.

Re:No

[reboot246]

You're probably right. I've been thinking about dropping Netflix anyway because I just don't watch it as much as I used to when it was new and different. I also have Amazon Prime (mostly for the free shipping), so I could drop Netflix and probably not suffer a bit.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

another slippery slope is what affected HULU.

We will start with 1 commercial then it will be 2
then 3
then 4
then 5
then 6

Might as well go back to regular TV or just torrent/stream.

Re:No

[Roger W Moore]

The one advantage we have with Netflix over broadcast stations is that it is on demand and, like websites, it is conceivable that if the ads become obnoxious it will motivate someone to provide a plugin to Ad Blocker to deal with them like there is for YouTube.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

What if they made netflix free with ads? Maybe they could make more from ads viewed by bingewatchers than the subscription fee to monetize the heavy tail.

Re:No

[Darinbob]

There's years of stuff there I haven't seen yet. Old programs I never watched, old programs I want to see again, new programs that I missed the first few episodes and can catch up on, etc. I guess it's kind of like the netflix dvd service but more convenient (my brother thinks it's the opposite). Amazon is more expensive unless you're an online shopper and it doesn't seem to have the big selection though it does have more of the newer programs, but I will wait a year for a season of shows to avoid subscribing to more than one service.

Re:No

[Darinbob]

Could work. Or maybe $6 for netflix with ads, or $10 for netflix without ads. After all if they think ads are such a huge revenue generator then they should be willing to drop the price to compensate.

QED

[Anonymous Coward]

We test hundreds of potential improvements to the service every year. Many never extend beyond that.

Bet this one will.

I could live with a post-show teaser...

[Radical Moderate]

...provided they don't show the same damn one every time. I find a lot of good shows through the "Recommended for You" category, if they teased one of those I'd be OK with it. But it's a slippery slope. You kids won't believe this, but used to be we didn't have to sit through half an hour of commercials in movie theaters, they even showed cartoons before the movie. And my lawn, get off it.

Re:I could live with a post-show teaser...

[ghjm]

And my axe. Get off it also.

Re:I could live with a post-show teaser...

[TapeCutter]

Yep, I grew up in a country town that is now an outer suburb of Melbourne. Saturday afternoons was the "$0.20 children's matinee" at the local theater, first we got a couple of cartoons, then everyone stood quietly to attention for "god save the queen", then John Wayne would come on and there was a roar of delight from the crowd, then we all start playing cowboys and indians in the theater. The adult staff did not try to control our behaviour, except to make sure we all stood quietly for the national anthem ( if you were silly enough to be sitting down an usher would come over and lift you to your feet by your ear), no child was ever thrown out, and we took full advantage of that policy. :).

Somewhat ironic that my first memory of "freedom".is being locked in a large padded room with 100 kids and John Wayne. Still, it worked out great from a social POV, everyone shopped on Saturday morning because the shops were closed Saturday afternoon and all day Sunday, so after "shopping with the kids", the kids got to burn off their energy and mum and dad got a quiet afternoon to restore theirs.

Re:I could live with a post-show teaser...

[Pulzar]

It's why once you start going to Alamo, you can't watch movies anywhere else. There are still cartoons and funny clips before the movie, no commercials, zero policy on noise and phones...

And, of course, great selection of beer and food.

Re:I could live with a post-show teaser...

[Whiteox]

Did you stand when the National Anthem was played before the feature?
I did.

Re:I could live with a post-show teaser...

[fafalone]

You adults won't believe this, but lots of us youngsters still don't have to sit through any commercials, have permanent offline copies with no DRM in better resolution than Netflix, that can't be taken away on the whims of corporations, and aren't subjected to a limited catalog missing extremely popular items to begin with. And, it's free! (minus the cost of maintaining 12TB of storage for a large collection of TV and movies in HD). Not that a lot of us youngsters feel that the production studios' behavior morally obligates us to provide compensation, but even if we wanted to there's no service at any price that offers this level of quality and flexibility. I know being all grown up with your job and disposable income makes you feel like subjecting yourself to the horrors of Netflix is the adult thing to do... but I choose to live in my immaturity where I don't pay for less.

Re:I could live with a post-show teaser...

[Whiteox]

Geez! Apart from you being a Southerner, I experienced the same thing up here in suburban Sydney.
One memory I won't forget is watching A Hard Day's Night with hundreds of screaming girls. Worse than the Monkees.
Now where's that neck beard trimmer?....

Re:I could live with a post-show teaser...

[Anonymous Coward]

Your first memory of "freedom" was being forced to stand for a national anthem?

Well, I suppose you did correctly place it in scare quotes.

Re:I could live with a post-show teaser...

[Anonymous Coward]

Careful with that axe, Eugene.

Re:I could live with a post-show teaser...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, over here it was Roger Corman. We saw all the Classics, even the Good Ones, at the local Fleapit.
And then came "Bonny And Clyde". We all convinced our Parents that all the other Parents said "OK", so we all went. We expected Bad Corman.
I think that it was the point where the Brother was screaming in pain, bathed by headlights, with half of his head blown off, that a couple of us started throwing up. It must have been the popcorn.
That was the end of our little Movie Club.

Which was actually OK, because the local TV stations were then competing in who could show the most daring films during "Movies 'Til Dawn". So we watched in dark near silence, while Fellini, and Godard and Truffaut, went to work. "Alphaville" and "The Tenth Victim". "Le Mepris" and "Babette Goes To War". Who was better- Jean Seberg without a bra in "Breathless", or Sophia Loren without a bra in "Boy On the Dolphin". The "Toby Dammit" segment in "Tales Of Mystery" because of The Car, Man, The Car. All movies that never played in our local Theater. They started played Don Knotts instead during the day, and a little while later, "Deep Throat" at night.
During Middle School Lunch Break the next day, we would quietly discuss what was on Late Night before, and whether we Got Caught.
We also discussed... get this... the Commercials. The ultra laid back Bald Dude selling waterbeds. Cal Worthington and His Dog Spot. (The species of Spot changed regularly.) The little, sprightly, ads for FIATs, MGs, ("The Midget. The B. The GT.") and Datsuns.
Since this was before Infomercials, Ads were actually clever, especially the locally produced ones. There was one for the Datsun 1200 that was just shots of the car in various backgrounds, with Vivaldi playing. No patter. At the end, simply overlaid: "Coast To Coast for under $30". (Gas back then was ~$.30/gal.)
And then there was Carol Doda, who occasionally hosted the Movies, and did a few PSAs, so raunchy in their nature that they could never be played during "Adult Viewing Hours"
She could simply say "This is the... Perfect... 36", slightly wiggle, and we would be on the floor laughing.

KRON didn't participate in this nonsense; they went off the air around 01:30. But it was worth watching their signoff. Instead of Flags and Jets and Patriotic songs, they played a bunch of faded clips of Nature, and abandoned Coastal buildings, to an Instrumental version of Faure's "Pavane".

The local Theater tried lots of things; their Last Gasp was appealing to the Stoner Crowd. Like "Pink Floyd: Live At Pompeii", and of course "Rocky Horror".
The town tore the Theater down, and put a Police Station in its place.
This caused a lot of Giggles. When the Police were eventually forced to return their confiscated copy of "Deep Throat" a few years before, it was displayed in the Lobby as a curiosity. Somehow, while in their custody, it was plumb wore out. There was no Reel, just a box filled with many stretches of sticky film.

Re:I could live with a post-show teaser...

[LaurenCates]

No mod points. Still want to call this interesting.

Re:I could live with a post-show teaser...

[DocSavage64109]

"better resolution than Netflix". Yeah, good luck with that. You have something higher than 4K on your offline copies?

Re:I could live with a post-show teaser...

[Anonymous Coward]

i usually exit before the very end unless I'm really interested in seeing the credits which is almost never. Occasionally movies will show bloopers or a few other interesting things during or after the credits but most don't.

If I let the credits run it's usually because I've already focused my attention on something else.

I'm just not going to see many post-show ads and I imagine there are a lot of other Netflix viewers that won't either.

Pre-show ads probably won't be enough to make me quit Netflix as long as they're not too annoying and show up even if I just saw the ad because I decided I didn't actually want to watch that after 5 minutes and find something else to watch.

I ditched cable and got a Roku and lots of channels have ads. I watch a fair amount of news and if it's ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, On or Sky you will often get an ad for (almost) every news story you watch even if it's just a 30 second raw video of some event. Most of them autoplay too and a few don't allow you to bail out of the ad without exitting all the way out of the channel and I don't even know if I'm interested in the next story.

Netflix is the only thing I pay for everything else is free. I've developed a strategy for ads though. I mute it, look at my computer and notice when the ad is over out of the corner of my eye and either pause it right away or unmute it. Then rigtht before a news story is done (often signalled by the reporter saying something like "John Doe reporting from Jerusalem for XYZ news) I go back to the selection of stories before the next ad or story can autoplay.

This is a bad habit though because I sometimes find myself doing so on live streams (like Al Jazeera, BBC World News or a number of other mostly international news organization although even they will run ads self-promoting themselves or occasionally have the weather sponsored by Qatar Airways or some crap like that).

Ads are also why I hardly even watch Al Jazeera America, but AJ English is what I watch more than any other news source (because of the lack of ads). I can fall asleep to AJE but not AJA.

What about product placement ads?

[tlhIngan]

To claim Netflix doesn't advertise omits a very background, but present form of advertising. It's called product placement, and it's where instead of buying some generic Cola or use a generic computer, or random cellphone, they clearly show it's a Coca-Cola, or an Apple iMac or a Samsung. If you ever wonder why they show closeups of a phone's screen or something, it's usually to show the logo for a second or two. Normally they'd just have the actor say it out loud (oh look, a call from Dad, etc), but if it's a product placement, you'll see a closeup on screen with "Dad" printed on it.

And really, I'd be surprised if Netflix's original shows aren't doing this - it's been generally marked as the least objectionable form of advertising because it adds realism (who drinks Cola? You know it's either a Coke or a Pepsi), and sometimes, the efforts of hiding logos is just plain silly.

And it's usually done during the writing stages where the show producers generally solicit sponsorship.

I know Netflix doesn't currently run normal commercials other than brief clips of other Netflix originals, but I'd be surprised if they aren't doing the product placement thing.

Re:What about product placement ads?

[bondsbw]

This definitely happens in Netflix originals, although I'd say it's no more than shows on other networks.

Re:What about product placement ads?

[Roger W Moore]

Actually if that is done well then I don't mind it at all since it is almost invisible. However when done badly it is the most obnoxious of all advertizing since it is impossible to avoid as it is part of the show.

Re:What about product placement ads?

[TapeCutter]

Yes product placement is unobtrusive but it's expensive and cannot replace normal advertising, if it could it would have done so back in the 1920's. The sponsor's wallet controls how the ad will be displayed, forcing people to sit thru ads to get to the meat is just fucking rude behaviour from penny pinching sponsors, I'm trying to train my own wallet to avoid doing business with them.

Re:What about product placement ads?

[fostware]

I think there was an entire season of Bones with scenes where they talked about the features of the car. Normally car rides on TV are for explanations or mundane problem solving sessions, but this was just cringe worthy. It went from background TV to never being watched again...

Re:What about product placement ads?

[Your.Master]

I found Chuck's product placement ads for Subway amazing actually. Rather than invisible, they were intentionally over-the-top to the point of being a clear parody. This on a show where significant time is spent in "Buy More" which is very clearly Best Buy.

Re:What about product placement ads?

[generica1]

I think it's how Subway likes to do their product placement, because Community did this too, including naming an actual character Subway in the show.. http://community-sitcom.wikia....

Re:What about product placement ads?

[Lisandro]

Indeed. The worst one i can remember was, by far, Will Smith raving about his "retro" Converse shoes in I, Robot. That was cringe worthy.

Google Play, Netflix

[DoofusOfDeath]

Google Play placed ads at the beginning of Archer episodes. It pissed by off considerably. I pay good money to NOT see commercials. Being force-fed ads when I paid for something (a movie ticket, a Google Play video, etc.) is about the surest way to get me to stop paying you money.

Seriously, fuck you Google. And if you do this, fuck you Netflix too.

Re:Google Play, Netflix

[Anonymous Coward]

" It pissed by off considerably"

I don't know what it did in fact do, but I fee confident exclaiming that it in fact did not piss by off considerably. Just sayin'

Re: Google Play, Netflix

[Anonymous Coward]

Turn off the AC. Your jokes are to cool.

Re:Google Play, Netflix

[Anonymous Coward]

And in accordance with Muphry's Law, it seems you "fee confident". Just sayin'.

Re:Google Play, Netflix

[TapeCutter]

"It pissed me off to a considerable degree." - by

Re:Google Play, Netflix

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazon did exactly the same thing with Archer as well. I assume that FX is responsible given that they showed the same ads for Justified and the Americans on every freaking episode.

Re:Google Play, Netflix

[Darinbob]

I was pissed by off as well, so he has a point.

Re:Google Play, Netflix

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazon has those same ads on Archer. I bought the Season 5 season pass, and it had ads for FX shows at the beginning and end of each episode. They got removed when Season 6 came on. But now Season 6 has the ads, which is why I didn't buy it. I love the show, but when I'm already paying $3 an episode you don't get to throw extra ads at me and expect me to keep buying.

Re:Google Play, Netflix

[Anonymous Coward]

Google is an advertising company, first and foremost. Everything they do is designed to farm ads to eyeballs, up to the point a given vector provides too few eyes, at which point they'll kill the product/service regardless of how well it actually functions.

editors

[Anonymous Coward]

why won't you edit?

Niemand hat die Absicht, eine Mauer zu errichten.

[Anonymous Coward]

We are not planning to test or implement third-party advertising on the Netflix service.

Ads on a paid service...

[Anonymous Coward]

Really Netflix? Even if it's for your "own stuff" it's still an ad. I don't want to see it if I'm paying. You start with your own ad and then you end up with "selected ad partners" only to end up showing us tampon ads. Slippery slope it is.

Re:Ads on a paid service...

[neminem]

I disagree. If it's for your own stuff, it's more of a trailer. Yes, there is the potential for a slippery slope - as seen by, well, trailers. Still, I don't mind trailers, and I don't mind this, either, as long as it's not obtrusive - i.e. in addition to not displaying a jillion car ads, like the reason I hardly ever go to movie theaters anymore, I also hope they don't play the *same ad over and over again*, like the reason I've started to have youtube ads, which I didn't mind quite as much originally. Hopefully they'll be able to figure out that, regardless of how much I might be happy to know about a new show they're planning on launching, once I've seen the same ad for it 3 times, I probably don't care to know about it again, as I've already been informed quite well.

Re:Ads on a paid service...

[enigma32]

Since you don't mind it, you can go ahead and watch them on your own time without ruining my experience.
I'm not interested. I have netflix so I don't have to watch ads. Looks like I'll be abandoning that type of entertainment entirely at some point...

Re:Ads on a paid service...

[Sebby]

I disagree. If it's for your own stuff, it's more of a trailer.

A trailer is simply and ad for some other movie/show than what I'm currently watching.

There will be advertisments, for some

[Trachman]

You can bet that there is an audience, certain type of clients, who would be very interesting to certain advertisers. Many sales departments are after the top strata of the society and their disposable income.

You can bet that if someone in a household with the income of $500K or more is watching a lot of netflix movies, then the revenues from advertisers would probably be more than enough to pay subscription fee and Netflix would probably even make a tidy profit.

Quite frankly, I am surprised that they have not rolled these type of memberships earlier.

There are... buyers of $4,000 tooth brush Reinast http://www.reinast.com/ , $1,200 shoes http://www.manoloblahnik.com/, and $1,500,000 cars http://www.bugatti.com/en/veyr... down there....

For the manufacturers of these goods targeted advertising on Netflix would open new avenues to increase their sales, a change from the traditional advertising done at Kentucky Derby, and old fashioned mail spamming, without actually wasting tons of advertising dollars for 95% of the non-targeted audience.

Clearly, Netflix is capable and probably will compete with Facebook after the advertising dollars, because many people spend a lot of time on Netflix only.

For these kind of clients Netflix not only will offer free membership, but will probably pay to watch it or would probably make available exclusive content.

And me??? I am waiting a job offer, or at least a spot award from Netflix for this idea...

Re:There will be advertisments, for some

[turp182]

The high-income households are just going to get pay-per-view in HD. The goal for Netflix/Amazon is to have as much content as possible available, as soon as possible for newer items, and a huge past collection.

The online services could destroy Redbox if it could pay for earlier access to new content. All it takes is money, probably on a per-movie basis at first, and after other contractual isses expire or are otherwise mitigated.

I would pay $10 at home for a HD version of a movie 2-4 weeks after theatrical release. Give me 48 hours and I am happy. I have kids...

The existing contracts are the issue (theaters primarily, 2nd run may have to happen before an online release).

These things will come to pass, but it will probably take a few years.

Re:There will be advertisments, for some

[Sowelu]

If you want stuff ASAP after release, Amazon's option to buy digital movies is pretty hard to beat. The business model is completely antithetical to what everyone on Slashdot likes, and it's pricey, but if speed is your absolute only criteria...it wins. Publishers allow sales before they allow rentals. (If it wasn't so expensive, they wouldn't let it go on sale so early, because it cannibalizes box office figures.)

Re: There will be advertisments, for some

[Anonymous Coward]

Unlikely, because then there will be an HD version to torrent. Theaters would go bankrupt.

Not Netflix first mistake

[cahuenga]

But if they let this take root, it's their last for me.

Better Be Able to Skip

[pubwvj]

We had better be able to skip these or NetFlix is in the trash.

Just in case this isn't very clear:

[xtal]

We will HAPPILY PAY MORE MONEY if you explain your circumstances.

We do not want to watch ads. Full up.

Thank you.

Sincerely,
The Internet.

Re:Just in case this isn't very clear:

[countSudoku()]

Dearest Internet and/or Intertubes,
        Thank you for your patronage, however we are right on our uppers, but we're expecting a postal order! If you could lend us a quid until next Tuesday we'll pay ya back as soon as it comes.

Yours,

-Ewing McNetflix

Re:Just in case this isn't very clear:

[QuietLagoon]

We will HAPPILY PAY MORE MONEY

You will be paying more money anyway.

.
The streaming prices are currently being kept low to build the customer base and lure people away from cable TV. Once a critical mass of streaming customers is reached, the content providers will begin raising the prices they charge to the streaming companies.

The content providers have done a similar thing with cable TV (causing most of the monthly price increases). It worked for them with cable TV, they will try it again with streaming.

Netflix is just trying to get their ad placements in place before the content providers start demanding their larger piece of the pie.

Re:Just in case this isn't very clear:

[Stan92057]

We? speak for yourself

Re:Just in case this isn't very clear:

[Anonymous Coward]

The content providers have done a similar thing with cable TV (causing most of the monthly price increases).

Cable companies don't pay for the content, they pay for the right to replace the network's commercials with their own commercials. Ever wonder why there are ads for local businesses on national cable networks? It's because your cable company puts them there, and it's paid by those local businesses, and it's that money that the networks want, not yours. The only reason your cable bill goes up is because the cable companies can use it as a convienent excuse to do even more money-grabbing without you blaming them for the bill increase.

Re:Just in case this isn't very clear:

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean Internets! There is more than one.

Re:Just in case this isn't very clear:

[Anonymous Coward]

While you might be willing to PAY MORE MONEY, advertisers WILL PAY MORE MONEY to get their ads to your eyes through Netflix.

Amazon Instant Video does something similar

[Anonymous Coward]

I buy a lot of FX shows on Amazon, and before they play they often show a quick teaser of other FX shows.

It is so fast I usually don't mind, and have never thought to get mad about it.

likely going to move to tiered service.

[Anonymous Coward]

I predict they'll play ads before content, occasionally with one touting their higher-tier package without ads.
Heck, if they had a free, ad-supported package, I'm sure they'd have plenty of takers.

As for this, I pay my monthly fee, I don't want to sit through ads.

Re:likely going to move to tiered service.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep. All of the catch-up services here in Australia interspace ads throughout the episodes. If netflix offered a free package supported by adverts I'd go for it (as long as the advert density was similar to the tv airing).

Advertisers are worms

[Anonymous Coward]

Advertising always worms its way into everything.

AC

Re:Advertisers are worms

[Registered Coward v2]

Advertising always worms its way into everything.

AC

A pox on both Netflix and the advertiser's houses, they have made worms meat of us.

that day...

[Anonymous Coward]

The day I am forced through a primetime commercial on Netflix is the day I cancel my sub.

My theory:

[Anonymous Coward]

You may wonder how this happened. Well, the CEO of Netflix was in his usual bar. (You need to look for him under the table.) He said, "I'm tired of work!!! What can I do to sink the company?" All the other Netflix executives, also under the table (the ones not too drunk yet to talk) said, "Abuse the customers." The CEO said, "Right. That's what we'll do."

Okay, just guessing. What are YOUR theories for why they are following the Comcast and Microsoft business model?

How exactly does this work?

[pla]

Wait, so do they rip the DVD/BDs, add in some ads, then re-burn them?

Of course, I still wouldn't see them, since I rip them before watching specifically to remove the ads and "unskippable" bullshit, but...

Oh! Wait - This only affects people already happily paying for a lower qual*BUFFERING*ity product. Never mind, then - Carry on with your paid inferior YouTube clone. ;)

Re:How exactly does this work?

[Sowelu]

You should really talk to someone about your connection problems. Can't say I ever have buffering issues on Netflix. The video quality might not be blu-ray, but I'm not watching in a home theater, either.

Re:How exactly does this work?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, I only have 30Mb cable and it's always streamed Netflix flawlessly. Like, for the past 5 years. Even on phones and tablets it has been excellent.
If you have a different experience, you're one of the few.

Re:How exactly does this work?

[Darinbob]

Yup, netflix has good quality. I was worried I might need to upgrade internet for it but it's been very good. Far far better than youtube.

I thought you paid to NOT watch commercials

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't the big draw of Netflix that you pay the annual subscription fee to not have to watch commercials?? If they start rolling out commercials, in any form and don't reduce/remove the subscription, are they not in breech of (implied) contract? Further, how many people will cancel and just torrent their content to avoid the commercials?

Hypothetically, obviously. Not condoning the theft of service, clearly. That would be wrong.

=P

Re:I thought you paid to NOT watch commercials

[Darinbob]

Well, no. Or is there a service I don't know of like netflix where it's completely free but with ads? It's not hulu, it has a rotten selection with limited time to be available. Not youtube, which is mostly user created junk with lower quality. Not amazon which is more expensive than netflix unless you're already in bed with them because you never leave the house and buy everything online. Not torrents which are illegal and we don't talk about them here on law abiding slashdot, not even during choir practice.

Bill Hicks said it best

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are in advertising or marketingkill yourself.

Ad on Roku

[fswine]

I received an advert on my Roku and was given the option to skip it.

Re:Niemand hat die Absicht, eine Mauer zu errichte

[Anonymous Coward]

And I'm not planning to leave unless you change your plans.... Don't give me a reason punk...

Netflix Is Experimenting With Advertising

[Snufu]

Bye Netflix. It was fun while it lasted.

Netflix is turning into Network

[t0qer]

So the big 3 (CBS, ABC, NBC) pretty much ruled the airwaves for years through this model.

Who's to say netflix isn't offering a free, commercial laden version of their programming? Free with ads, $10@mo without.

The reason why I left DVDs

[QuietLagoon]

I stopped using Netflix for DVD rentals because more and more of the DVDs I was receiving had non-skippable advertising before the movie started. Now Netflix is going to start chasing away their streaming customers because advertisers want to place forced-viewing ads before program streams.

.
Netflix is becoming part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Re:The reason why I left DVDs

[Anonymous Coward]

Netflix isn't the party sticking the ads on the DVDs, you know.

Re:The reason why I left DVDs

[kuzb]

Are you that stupid? DVDs come with ads from the companies that produce the DVDs. Netflix had no control over that. Almost any bluray/dvd you buy right now has ads in it. It's the industry standard model - the studios always advertise their own stuff on the media they create.

It sound like Sky TV

[Anonymous Coward]

They appear to have copied some of Sky TV's materials, thats how they started by claiming they wouldn't run ad's - now they run nothing but ads.

"We are not planning to" != "We do not intend to"

[QuietLagoon]

How many times have companies told us that they do not plan to do something, only to do it a year or two later?

April fools?

[EmperorOfCanada]

No
No
No
No
No
No
No
No
and a big fat No.

Does Netflix want a competitor to wipe them out? Cause this is how you get a competitor to wipe you out!

The difference is I have options now

[rsilvergun]

Video games. DVDs. On demand video. Audio books. Heck digital books if I'm willing to work for my entertainment :P. But There's lots and lots of content out there.

Hey, when did this happen?

[Anonymous Coward]

When did Dice buy NetFlix? I mean, aren't they happy killing slashdot and sourceforge, or do they need to ruin bigger players too?

HBO

[Narcogen]

I remember the 80s when the sales pitch for HBO was uninterrupted, uncut movies and no advertisements. Then somehow, "pay TV" also became filled with advertisements as well, even though you were still paying for it.

Re:HBO

[Anonymous Coward]

HBO still is uninterrupted, uncut movies. Just with ads inbetween. Up to 5 minutes of them. I was just watching HBO last time in a China hotel.

bargaining chip

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect it has more to do with helping Netflix bid for content otherwise they wouldn't be able to. Many popular TV series has contracts which allows content owner/distributer to insert their own advertisements separate from the network's. So for example on a one hour show, they are looking at around 2-3 adverts for extra revenue stream which isn't going to the network. Shows like Seinfield won't give up that revenue stream unless Netflix will makeup for the difference. Extra wrinkle is that shows like Seinfield will be packaged together with other less desirable shows that'll each get their own slots for ads.

Oh whew!

[null etc.]

We test hundreds of potential improvements to the service every year.

Oh, do you hear that, guys? It's an improvement. Much fuss about nothing, then.

Re:"We are not planning to" != "We do not intend t

[Darinbob]

Hmm, lots. Let me try this model for myself.

"I do not plan on becoming independently wealthy with a trophy wife within the foreseeable future!"
Now I wait a year or two and see what happens.

Did you think they wouldn't?

[koan]

If they can establish themselves and rise above competition they will put ads in there, and then they will raise the subscription fees.

Don't push your luck

[nehumanuscrede]

The quickest way to go bankrupt would be to screw over your customer base.

Everyone using Netflix does so because we've had it with the bullshit dished out by the big players. ( cable, satellite, uverse, etc )

We don't want the GD ads. Why is this so difficult to grasp ? The whole POINT of paying for content is so we don't get harassed with advertising every ten fucking minutes. It's so bad we now go out of our way to avoid or actively filter it. That alone should tell you something.

Believe me when I say your bandwidth / peering problems will go away almost overnight when you start putting in ads because you'll probably set a world record for customers lost in shortest amount of time.

Don't say we didn't warn you. . .

I've been a subscriber for 14 years

[OrangeTide]

And if I start getting ads, I'm leaving.

I don't understand the anger...

[Anonymous Coward]

If it's a quick 60sec ad before the start of the show I'm completely fine with that. They can add as many adverts post-show as they like I don't really care. The pre-show stuff I do care about because I don't particularly feel like waiting 15-30min for ads to finish like they do in cinemas.

Don't Show Ads!

[Anonymous Coward]

There are basically 3 segments that NetFlix streams to ... well in Canada at least: Kids TV Shows, Adult TV Shows and Movies. They could easily charge $8/m for each segment. They currently charge $8 for access to everything. No ads it why I watch it in the first place.

ITT

[Anonymous Coward]

In this thread: first world problems, everywhere.

You people will bitch about literally anything, won't you?

Actually...

[Andy Smith]

I'm okay with paying for an ad-free service and then having ads pushed at me. Said nobody ever.

I'm kinda middle of the road

[Chas]

If it helps expand their content roster, I could put up with 120 seconds of ad or less before a movie.

If they go mid-content ads, a'la Hulu? I'm fucking gone faster than John Moschita could say "Eat a dick."

No.

[kuzb]

If they start serving me ads, they will stop getting my money entirely. I absolutely despised cable for this. They make you pay ridiculous sums for tons of channels, most of which you'll never watch, and then cram ads down your throat as though the amount you just paid them wasn't good enough.

I like what netflix is doing right now with no ads, and I want them to keep on this trajectory. If they do, they'll have my business until I die.

Hang on...

[Rainwulf]

I pay Netflix for NO ads. Now im paying netflix for ads? Why should I do that? I get ads for free from the rest of the internet!

Re:"We are not planning to" != "We do not intend t

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called testing the water. You let something unpleasant slip, then watch for outrage, revise X time later, repeat.

It is the same plan builders use when they want to build something totally unsuitable for an area, or bribers/lobbyists use when pushing their mega-corp laws screwing over the public. Start with an extreme, push, revise, push until accepted, which ends up with precisely what they wanted in the first place, with an occasional bonus of getting more through.

bi-ya-chi

[Anonymous Coward]

Feels wrong for a paid service. Luckily I finished watching all that I want to watch and unsubscribed last month.

orly?

[Anonymous Coward]

"improvements"

Happened to me a couple of days ago

[MtlDty]

Just sat down to watch a new episode of 'The Returned' and it threw an advert at me. I was honestly just so shocked by this that I actually paid no attention to the content of the advert at all. I actually backed out just to check I actually was using Netflix, and that I was actually logged in and so on...

Haven't seen another since, but I will be emailing a complaint if I do.

Re:Happened to me a couple of days ago

[terbeaux]

Why wait? Complain now: https://contactus.netflix.com/...

I'm one of those users.

[Anonymous Coward]

I was wondering what the fuck happened the other night when I went to watch an episode of Sherlock and an ad came up.

In any case I canceled my Netflix account yesterday. I'm not paying to see ads.

Re:I'm one of those users.

[Anonymous Coward]

In any case I canceled my Netflix account yesterday. I'm not paying to see ads.

Not sure you have much choice watching content legally, without ads. Every video distributor will show ads when they become big and want to increase their income. Even if Netflix loses 10% customers to ads, they might make up that loss with 30% revenue increase from ads.

If only people read books instead of TV (broadcast, cable, Netflix), web, FM radio/Spotify, there would be fewer ads consumed.

I *WILL* cancel

[gatkinso]

No way am I putting up with that shit.

F that, I DID cancel

[gatkinso]

The website didn't ask why, so I called them and told the customer rep why.

I urge all Netflix customers to do the same.

Investment advice from ex-Nortel stockholder

[Anonymous Coward]

Sell enough stock to cover your investment and a rate of interest appropriate to your bank savings NOW.

They're already sinking, trust me on this, they wouldn't be experimenting with this if they weren't set on doing it, so even if they'd survive without, they're not going to DO without ad revenue.

I will accept ads.

[Anonymous Coward]

I will accept ads on Netflix in exchange for a free service. If you want to give me access to the entire Netflix catalog for free, in exchange for running ads, that's fine. I mean, as long as I have the option to pay for the service and *not* get ads, instead.

I am not willing to pay for the service AND get ads. That is the shit Hulu does and that (along with their retarded fucking episode retention rules that follow no logic or consistency) is why I don't touch Hulu.

If you force me to watch ads, I'll go back to full time torrenting of my movies and tv shows.

Those don't bother me, if done well

[Sycraft-fu]

I mean you need things like computers, cellphones, beverages, etc in a show. I'm not bothered if those have logos, or if they don't. In fact, it can look more natural and realistic if they do. A Good example is Dell in V for Vendetta. Nothing in your face, the logos on the cop's monitors just aren't covered up. They are just part of the set. When it is done like that, I'm quite happy.

An example of it being done poorly that bothered me was in I Robot, when Will Smith puts on some brand new Converse shoes released in sync with the movie and talks about them. It was very clearly something shoehorned in there, not a fluid part of the script.

I watch a lot

[Cro Magnon]

I watch a lot of stuff on Netflix. There are several shows that are on TV and Netflix, and I watch those on Netflix. Netflix has 2 things going for it. It has quite a bit of content that I like. AND IT HAS NO ADS!!!

I tried the free Hulu, and even for free it wasn't worth it. If NF wants to raise prices and stay ad-free, fine, it's worth quite a bit more than I'm currently paying. If they want to do ads, that will totally ruin them at any price, even free.

Tell them

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're a subscriber, jump on their "live chat" and tell them you don't want it.

From the reaction I received, it appears I'm not the only one that has done so...

Nope

[Anonymous Coward]

Once the ads come, I will drop my netflix sub within the hour.

Re:"We are not planning to" != "We do not intend t

[Anonymous Coward]

"We are not planning, we already did that part"

I will cancel the same day

[Anonymous Coward]

If I see an advertisement on Netflix when starting a movie, I will cancel my service within 24 hours - and probably a lot less.

My Feedback to Netflix

[DickBreath]

I was able to get into a live chat with someone at Netflix and give them this feedback.



Please do not even go down the rabbit hole of experimenting with advertising. I enjoy the ad-free experience that you currently offer. The world is literally polluted with ads, and we do not need more. Advertisers will mandate the placement of ads on the inside of our eyeballs once the technology becomes available. Instead, raise your prices if it is more money that you need to support and improve your already excellent service.

If this terrible idea must go forward (managers, executives, etc), then please offer a higher priced ad-free plan.

Decades ago, cable TV sold itself to the advertisers. It's like an addictive drug. It was argued back then, at first, to justify that you pay for cable tv, that it would be ad-free. We see how that worked out. Now cable tv spends more time on ads than it does on content. And the content has deteriorated to the point that it is literally un-watchable. Instead I watch online internet TV, such as Netflix and others. I hope that I don't eventually have to shift my viewing habits again because Netflix goes the way of cable TV.

Please, please do not open up this can of worms. You cannot re-can it once opened. Netflix will gradually deteriorate into more and more ads and less and less content. Ads will end up driving decisions, including eventually the content, until the disease of ads infect the content itself like a cancer. It is a gradual process that starts on a slippery slope at a watershed moment. A watershed is like the continental divide. There is a line through the US where if a drop of rain falls on one side of the line, it ends up eventually in the Atlantic ocean. If it falls only a few inches away on the other side of the line, it eventually ends up in the Pacific ocean. This advertising is like that. Netflix is at a watershed moment that will affect its destiny. Please don't make the wrong choice.

I think I'm getting some of this . . .

[dmatos]

Over the past couple of weeks, I have finished a few series on Netflix. Each time, after the last episode of the series, I'm treated to a 30-second trailer for the Netflix original Sense8.

Meh. Doesn't bug me at all. If this is all they do, I'm cool with it.

AdBlock = Slower, Inferior + 'Souled-Out'

[Anonymous Coward]

Can adblock do 16 things hosts do for speed, security, & reliability:

1.) Protect vs. malicious sites/servers (beyond malicious ads: See 2-10 next)
2.) Protect vs. fastflux botnets + stop communication to C&C servers
3.) Protect vs. dynamic dns botnets + stop communication to C&C servers
4.) Protect vs. DGA botnets + stop communication to C&C servers
5.) Protect vs. downed DNS (adds reliability)
6.) Protect vs. DNS redirect poisoned dns
7.) Protect vs. trackers
8.) Protect vs. spam
9.) Protect vs. phishing
10.) Protect vs. bandwidth caps
11.) Get you past a dnsbl
12.) Keep you off dns request logs
13.) Speed up websurfing by adblocks & hardcoded fav. sites
14.) Work on ANY webbound app (think stand-alone email programs) multiplatform.
15.) Give you easily texteditor controlled data for the above
16.) Do all that & block ads (better than addons) more efficiently in cpu cycles + memory usage

* ANSWER ="NO" to each above on AdBlock doing it as well or at all!

APK

P.S.=> AdBlock does FAR less than hosts do & FAR less efficiently - hosts do MORE w/ less + Hosts start w/ the IP stack before REDUNDANT inefficient addons BEGIN to operate (as 1st resolver queried):

AdBlock's SLOWER than hosts: http://superuser.com/questions...

AdBlock's 4++gb & 100% CPU usage flooring inefficiency -> https://blog.mozilla.org/nneth... + ClarityRay defeats it + it 'souled-out' & is crippled by default paid off to not do its job http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/... & ABP too http://finance.yahoo.com/news/...

AdBlock adds complexity/room for breakdown/exploit + from a slower mode of operations (usermode = more messagepassing overheads vs. hosts in kernelmode).

For the BEST hosts file?

APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-2 32/64-bit -> http://start64.com/index.php?o...

MalwareBytes' hpHosts Admin (MalwareBytes employee) hosts & recommends it -> http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl... & MalwareBytes = BEST antivirus http://www.av-test.org/en/news...

... apk

I read otherwise

[cowabummer]

But their spokesperson specifically said otherwise on Twitter just yesterday - "We have zero intention of putting ads on our platform; no change at all in policy." https://twitter.com/emilysteel...

Actually, it was brilliant.

[edawstwin]

Then you also remember when TBS/TNT started their programs at :05 and :35. Which meant that when you changed channels to any other station, you missed the first 5 minutes of that program.

Turner did this solely because it gave the channel its own entry in TV Guide (which people paid for!).

Re:Actually, it was brilliant.

[IhateMonkeys]

Good point. I never thought of it that way. My parents didn't subscribe to TV Guide. They just used the "free" tv guide that came in the Sunday Washington Post.

DarinBob = "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

DarinBob = "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

DarinBob = "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

DarinBob = "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

DarinBob = "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

DarinBob = "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

DarinBob = "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

DarinBob = "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

DarinBob = "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

DarinBob = "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

DarinBob = "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

DarinBob = "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

DarinBob = "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

DarinBob = "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

DarinBob = "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

DarinBob = "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...