Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Ah ... I remember when cable TV started putting ads in. Didn't turn out pretty.
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.
...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.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
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.
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.
..don't panic
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.
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.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
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.
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...
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
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!
You were critically hit for no damage. The bruise will look nice, and maybe the scars will make good party talk.
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.
This is the NSA, we're gonna geet U h@x0r5! Also, what is a h@x0r5?
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.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
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.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Bye Netflix. It was fun while it lasted.
How many times have companies told us that they do not plan to do something, only to do it a year or two later?
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.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
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.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
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.
Georgia Tech, the leader in Chia(tm) technology.
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...
"We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over." - Aneurin Bevan
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.
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.
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.
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. . .
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.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.