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Netflix 'Would Lose 57 Percent of Their Subscribers If They Added Commercials' (netimperative.com)
According to new research from marketing technology firm Audience Project, the majority (57%) of UK customers would stop watching Netflix if commercials were introduced, and even lowering subscriptions would cause a significant drop off of 42%. Here are some of the other key findings: - In the UK, Netflix takes the lion's share of the streaming audience at 70%, followed by BBC iPlayer (61%). Interestingly, YouTube, ITV Player and All4, all of which host ads, saw a decline.
- TV is still the preferred streaming device in the UK used by 42% of respondents.
- Streaming is on the rise particularly amongst the young, with almost as many 15-25 year olds streaming/downloading (63%) as watching traditional TV (65%) "This is proof, if it were needed, that Netflix is right to focus on growing through its investment in content rather than considering hosting advertising any time soon," Netimperative reports.
Martyn Bentley, Commercial Director UK at Audience Project, comments: "Our findings highlight the growing importance of targeting and relevance in advertising. As consumers have increasing choice over whether or not they see ads, both broadcasters and advertisers alike need to work hard to ensure that campaigns enhance experience, rather than detract -- plus it suggests that greater inroads need to be made with Connected TV as a means to help tailor advertising at a granular level."
- TV is still the preferred streaming device in the UK used by 42% of respondents.
- Streaming is on the rise particularly amongst the young, with almost as many 15-25 year olds streaming/downloading (63%) as watching traditional TV (65%) "This is proof, if it were needed, that Netflix is right to focus on growing through its investment in content rather than considering hosting advertising any time soon," Netimperative reports.
Martyn Bentley, Commercial Director UK at Audience Project, comments: "Our findings highlight the growing importance of targeting and relevance in advertising. As consumers have increasing choice over whether or not they see ads, both broadcasters and advertisers alike need to work hard to ensure that campaigns enhance experience, rather than detract -- plus it suggests that greater inroads need to be made with Connected TV as a means to help tailor advertising at a granular level."
If Youtube had ads their viewership would drop a lot too.
Netflix could create a lower priced tier with commercials. It could start at $5 a month for 1 concurrent stream for extremely price sensitive customers.
it's not 57% it's 56.732%. Let's keep this discussion rooted in reality people.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
The interesting question is not whether a large portion of their existing subscribers would bail with commercials. That goes without saying. Even if they cut the price massively, one of the major reasons for paying for Netflix is the ability to get good content without commercials, and they know this.
Rather, the interesting questions is whether a lower-cost or free ad-subsidized tier would bring in enough additional subscribers to offset the loss from subscribers in the ad-free tier switching to that ad-subsidized tier.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
According to my pihole setup - youtube doesn't have ads :)
No, the findings highlight the fact that consumers don't want advertising. Anyone other than a marketing droid would see this as declining importance of ads. Talk about cognitive dissonnance.
Advertising is a pollutant deliberately injected into society. Most people instinctively dislike it but few realise how much damage it does.
All types of pollution should be limited by government regulation. Currently advertising is not sufficiently regulated. It is a shame that so many businesses are fundamentally about spreading this type of pollution to the detriment of society.
I refuse to pay twice. That's why I have never given Hulu a cent. I don't care how great the shows are, or how much my kids will kick and scream.
Why not keep the current model, while offering a cheaper, or even free tier with commercials. People often say one thing, but their actions don't always match - someone who said they'd quit netflix with ads, might actually watch with commercials if it was free. Youtube model, watch ads or pay subscription.
injecting ads for their original content and no way to stop those commercials is why I left netflix after 8 years.
Can we talk about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez instead? She's really hot and knows how instagram so I figure we should take her seriously.
My SO is a playwrite - I watch a new play every night in my living room for free - and I always give a standing O
They lose 100% of my attention when ads are on anyway.
Step 1. Mute.
Step 2. Look away or look at another device.
Step 3. (Optional) Consider how I could acquire the same content with no ads, any means necessary.
Why the actual fuck are you going to PAY every month for something like Netflix if you're still going to be subjected to commercials? It would make zero sense. if they want to add commercials then they should charge ZERO dollars per month. If you PAY for it then you should get ZERO commercials, plain and simple. If they're not making enough money then raise the damned subscription fee. Otherwise why bother? Just put an antenna on your roof at that point and pay nothing anyway, record everything on a DVR, and skip past the commercials.
Product placement. From close-up shots of car logos to iPhone to minutes of preternaturally crisp iPhone interface footage to gratuitous tobacco-use scenes, Netflix's original content is full of product placement.
I don't see why people put up with this, let alone PAY for it.
I would drop as well. I would rather they increase their fees by another few bucks, or better yet just offer a close to free option with commercials
Shock. Perhaps it has something to do with the ITV player hosting almost no programs that are not either 1. "Reality TV" 2. Old or 3. Very old. As for Ch4, they have turned their Roku interface to sh*t. Much more difficult to find anything now. I can only think that the people who design the UI never actually use it themselves.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Cough... Cough...
You can barely scroll through the menus without being intercepted with a quick "ad" for the icon your TV is hovering over. You cannot opt-out of this behavior.
I never found out if this experiment was temporary... or region-by-region but they were testing self-ads between series episodes.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/08/netflix-begins-testing-ads-for-its-own-series-between-binge-season-episodes/
And they have the gall to dig in my pocket to pay for their "original content"? Birdbox sucked and I don't want to pay to right that fail-boat. Netflix paid 100 million to keep reruns of Friends? Not interested. Their growth has slowed in the US recently.. should I pay for that and raise their stock price by paying more?
PPFFFFFFTTTT.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/01/15/netflix-raises-prices-pay-original-content/?utm_term=.6f723751bdf5
Now, Iâ(TM)ve seen everything they have that I want.
I keep it because my daughter watches Trolls and for when Stranger Things comes back on in July.
Beyond that, Iâ(TM)d cancel it now if I could.
Their rating system does little beyond suggesting movies I have already watched or things I have glossed over already.
Please put mor time travel shows on or, better yet - time travel shows that go to cowboy days - my favorite (vomit).
This makes me wonder if advertising, on video media, runs a risk of dying out.
Youtube is now offering an ad free subscription.
If NetFlix has such a large chunk of the viewing population then where can you get your product videos into eye balls?
Facebook? Not everyone uses it and you can ignore most things there.
How long until Facebook offers an ad free subscription or does it capitalise on the other channels shutting up shop?
It's not like NetFlix customers don't have an alternative as an en masse return to piracy could be one public backlash,
A balance must be maintained.
This is an interesting study as it raises a lot of questions about the future of screen viewing and advertising's place in it - if at all.
Like with Hulu, they still have ads even if you pay, so fuck them.
The Youtube model isn't what it seems since ad blockers or a Pi hole can block 100% of ads with no ill effects.
the only inroads needed is a road that leads to those parasites going out of business
If they wanted us to put up with commercials, then they should have kept the aerial TV running instead of shutting it down for cable-only TV. We're directly paying for a service, and are within our rights to expect it to be efficient and not annoying.
Is a fucking idiot though and through.
They already lost me with their auto-streaming commercials for their own products. In addition to a shrinking library of titles to watch I just found myself staring at a website that wouldn't stop screaming at me while I couldn't find anything I wanted to spend my time watching.
As you suggested, it definitely depends on how much. A five-second ad before the show, or at the end, is a lot different than a two-minute interruption in the middle of the show.
I'm sure a lot of people would rather pay less and have ads. The fact that most YouTube viewers choose ads over paying $10 is evidence of that. The cool thing about streaming vs broadcasting is that different viewers can have a different experience. Some can choose free with ads, others can choose to pay monthly. Different bitrates / quality are available, and a small reduction in quality can significantly reduce bandwidth / costs (including hardware throughput etc.)
Personally, I'd much rather see a short ad for a new Raspberry Pi shield or budget 3D printer than a Massengil ad, and streaming allows for users to see ads that might actually interest them. I might personally prefer relevant ads of interest to me over paying cash.
I'd say the frequency at which there are commercial interruptions and the duration of them matter too.
Company will lose customers if they change their whole business model. No shit.
Most people would stay, even those that say they would leave. Business know this, it's why the quality of so many things is dropping.
If I ever see a single ad on Netflix I will immediately end my subscription.
Reminds me of when I signed up for a trial week of Hulu, not knowing anything about it other than that it was a competitor to NetFlix. First day, when I saw a commercial in the the middle of a show, my jaw dropped nearly to the floor. I didn't need the next six days to try it out. Cancelled it on the first day during the trial period.
If I'm paying for a service, I'd expect it to not have any commercials. Like another poster said above, I wouldn't even use the service if they paid me $5 or $10 per month. That's how much I hate commercials.
Which brings me to my beef with commercials. There are people who commercials work on. Then there are people who see commercials as a nuisance, since not matter how much they'd try to sell me something, I wouldn't be interested in buying it. It's like walking into a car dealership so you can test drive a car to compare it to other cars you're going to test drive. Some people buckle to the pressure sales. Me? There's no way you can convince me on the spot that I should buy that car. I would be taking my time and doing my homework. By the time I walk into a dealership and ask to buy a car, they wouldn't have to convince me at all, because I've already done my homework.
Commercials are the same way. I'm not going to buy a Sony stereo because I saw it in a commercial. I'm not going to fly United because I like George Gershwin. For people like me, a service that would be commercial free is the best bet for the streaming companies to keep us as customers.
Is that a roll of dimes in your pocket or are you happy to see me?
Sorry, sounds boring to me. Is there at least some product placement in the plays? I need to know what clothes to wear, what soft drink to drink, and what car to drive.
It's impossible to paused when browsing their content without some preview automatically launching.
Instead of interrupting the watching exprience on the SmartTv with some random and boring ads that last 3/4 minutes they should send targeted push notification ads to the viewer's smartphone. In this way the viewer can decide to open the notification immediately, after or never. In addition the conversion rate would be higher being sure that the received ads is customized/suited to his own preferences and past activity ( if I liked watches and cars I will mainly receive push ads of watches and cars...).
Kliksee.com is developing this aformentioned technolgy that doesnt require any pairing process ( no QR code or audio sampling) and allows the TV to send push notification ads targeted to the exact viewers smartphone.
You can see a demo here : https://youtu.be/jQOUON5a7xs
Let us know your feedback!
Netflix have what you or I would be told is not a business model if we went to the bank: sell everything you have at a loss. Same as Uber, the only way it works is if you drive everyone else out of business before you run out of cash. That's just not going to happen.
So, obviously, they need to find some way of making this pay and if advertising is their answer then instantly they become old media delivered over new pipes.
I'm sure none of the people who were in at the ground floor care about any of this; they'll be long gone by the time Netflix is bought at a knock-down price by Amazon who, you know, actually have a profitable business (AWS) to cross-subsidise the losses with.
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
"rather than considering hosting advertising any time soon"
If you can't commit to Netflix not showing ads, then you're doing the opposite, just not saying it.
I paid hundreds of dollars for an airline seat, only to have a screen flashing only advertisements in my face. Then if I want to watch something of my own choosing, I have to pay to access the in-flight programming.
Once withdrawal symptoms settle in if there is no meaningful competition for Netflix a large percentage of the people would gnash their teeth and rejoin lest their brains leak out or something. I have seen this pattern before. Most anybody old enough has.
{^_-}
This could be a moment similar to one all successful companies hit sooner or later - the point where they have saturated their market.
Netflix has seen incredible growth, likely a lot of it from signing on new clients. But the problem is, they have allowed the stock market to believe that this sort of growth is sustainable, when everything we know about markets tells us that this isn't possible. So it's possible that this is Netflix floating the idea to see how people react, for example by analyzing trending social media comments.
For existing NetFlix subscribers, I suspect the best thing to do is be very vocal that this would be a deal-breaker for you. If enough people make that view clear, I'm pretty sure they will reconsider, primarily because a flattening of the revenue curve is better than a precipitous drop. Remember folks: actions speak louder than words.
How the hell does advertising enhance programming? It always detracts.
I'm sure a lot of people would rather pay less and have ads.
Sure. And those already have plain old TV with commercials. But there are also a lot of people who won't watch commercials. They just won't! This is achieved in various ways. The rich won't have their time wasted, and simply pay for ad-free content. If there are few ad-free solutions in the market, they buy movies & series on blu-ray. The smart go for adblockers or record+skip solutions. Others follow the smart people as their solutions become sufficiently easy to use. (I.e. you no longer need to compile yourself on linux)
As providers make ad-skipping harder, these people rather leave & drop the content, than suffer the ads. We can play video games instead of watching ad-infested TV.
WTF is it with a random 'research group' doing useless study's. The only entity that could have possibly requested this research is Netflix and it is clear they didn't. Netflix has a successful business model right now and I just don't see them changing to adding commercials for a short term gain.
I'm a cheapskate and for the few shows i do watch from netflix are not worth the 8 quid a month to me. I don't watch re-runs or anything other than brand new shows so at the moment i'd be paying 8 quid a month for the punisher.
If they could have a 4 quid HD tier with some adverts i'd probably join as ~5 quid is pretty much my barrier to entry for anything.
The major difference is that the ITV hub is streaming only, while iPlayer allows downloads. And lots of people are watching TV while travelling, where your internet connection is either very expensive, very slow, or if you are underground, non existing.
With iPlayer I have a reasonably good choice of TV series that I can download at home with a good internet connection and watch on the train for free, and movies can usually be downloaded for a week.
Being advert free is nice, but other factors are much stronger in favour of iPlayer.
If an ad shows in front of a YouTube video I close the window.
Unless it's PewDiePie, then I refresh for round 2
The day the even consider that possibility is the day I ditch them.
Just the mixing of included with Prime and "buy now" on Amazon is highly detracting to me on Prime. I left cable to escape the constant barrage of brain damaging commercials. Netflix is the only refuge. Even DVD's sometimes have commercials.
Netflix's big price hikes are also a bad way to go. They could, instead, add a broader mix of titles for higher prices. That would earn them more money without pissing off their existing customers. It's really sad if they are thinking that the lack of commercial free alternatives enables them to make sudden big price hikes. It's utterly absurd to think they are going to add commercials and stay in business.
The ultimate and best solution by far would be a free and open mesh network for streamed moves, not controlled by any one company. That is, studios could market their movies and series over this mesh network directly to customers. Customer could pay for each, individually, or build a rationing plan. Movie rationing would work like this:
1. Decide how much you want to pay, per week (unlike months, a week is always exactly 7 days).
2. Select filtering criteria (e.g. percentage for each genre, minimum ratings, etc).
3. As each payment is received, a new selection is made (as far as the rental prices fall within your monthly payment), excluding those you've already watched (unless you mark to specifically keep).
You'd have a true free market in movies with earnings going directly to the studios that produce or own them -- no overhead loss, either increasing their ability to produce and/or reduces your prices to watch them. Also, free movies could be unlimited.
Customers have far more power and choice... freedom. Everybody wins except for middlemen.
Lowering subscriptions would cause us to run away!?
damn straight! (I know - score 0 but I gotta say it.)
Back in the day, the FCC *mandated* a limit for the amount of time/hour for commercials. Like, 5 min or was it 7 min PER HOUR.
Then, when cable started coming in in the late seventies and early eighties, what they *advertised* was "pay for cable, and you'll never have to watch commercials again".
Yes, for real. Meanwhile, the last time I watched an hour show on cable, it was 22 min/hour of commercials.
About 95% of the reason I have Netflix is no ads.
The autoplay preview crap is already testing my patience. Add ads, and I'm gone.
Find ad-free elsewhere, or simply not watch. There's plenty to occupy my time.
Paying for commercials is why we hate cable and lead to cord cutting!
Who has done the maths? Diane Abbott?
Netflix could experiment with digital product placement, just like they are producing Interactive movies and series. This 4 page paper is an introduction to this topic: https://www.academia.edu/12616... If they use state of art technology, Netflix could sell a lot of Ads and product placement without annoying their paying customers.
57% say they would leave Netflix.
How many actually would cannot be determined by a bunch of muppets handing out some fuckarsed questionnaire.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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I don't watch commercial TV anymore, because of Netflix, I never liked ads, and now we don't have to tolerate them. If they introduced ads into netflix I would unsub right away! (and it's a premium account).
I've got subbed youtube, and no ads there.. it would likely become my primary (and only) source of video entertainment.
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