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Netflix launches an ad-supported tier
- IndigoIncognito 4y agoSoap2day lookin real spicy right now
- Bhurn00985 4y agoAhh the slippery slope towards the day that maybe "a little bit" of ads can be shown across all subscription tiers has started... Once you can show ads in one place, the pressure to show ads across the board will become enormous.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- akmittal 4y agoIt's like all the services are increasing their price and decreasing the content/quality. I find that's issue with startup culture where they have lost billions of dollars in name of growth and now they need to recover
- colejohnson66 4y agoIt doesn't help that the original appeal of Netflix (having everything at your fingertips) was ruined by media companies starting their own streaming sites
- yamtaddle 4y agoWe shouldn't allow vertical integration of streaming services and production. Just like we (in the US, at least) didn't allow vertical integration of movie theaters and movie production for decades (ended only very recently). It'd solve a lot of the problems in this space.
- ghaff 4y agoNetflix (streaming) never gave you everything at your fingertips though. If you wanted a full film catalog you subscribed--or do subscribe though the back catalog has degraded--to the DVD by mail service.
- karim79 4y agoMy gripe here is, for example, YouTube premium charging to remove ads and that indeed does make the experience better - and then there are sponsorship messages for stuff I won't name <cough> nordvpn for instance. There seems to be no rules about in-video sponsorship which honestly is driving me nuts. I feel like it is impossible to get away from ads no matter what one pays at this point.
- zimpenfish 4y ago> YouTube premium charging to remove ads [...] and then there are sponsorship messages That's the main reason I won't even consider YouTube Premium - pointless to pay for "an ad-free experience" when, instead, you get a 5 minute segment in the middle of a video shilling for [flavour of the month]VPN or Audible.
- the_af 4y agoWell, there are nuances. If you are playing a playlist of music videos, "standard" ads ruin your playlist. And music videos don't have sponsor interruptions. That said, the "sponsor segment" has become a staple in the YouTube channels I follow, and it is noticeable, but most authors will helpfully place it in its own segment, where you can skip it. I never watch the sponsor messages, because why would I? Ads suck.
- herbst 4y agoIf you use SmartTube App (afaik only on TV) it can automatically skip these segments (as well as ads)
- zimpenfish 4y agoAlas, it is a Samsung TV with an Apple TV plugged in. Double-unsupported!
- Bhurn00985 4y agoThough I pay for premium because I loathe ads, it still feels like a blackmail payment. A bit like paying protection money to the mafia. That said, sponsorblock works decently well for automatically skipping sponsored messages.
- crazygringo 4y agoWell, yes. They all have to become long-term profitable, so that's how it works. You can't really complain, though. It was nice to have better-quality content for cheap while it lasted, so we can just appreciate that. But now you actually have to pay what things are worth. I don't see the problem.
- fsckboy 4y agoyes, you can complain that artificially low prices snuff out competitors and long run lead to a less competitive market
- MBCook 4y agoUp to 5 minutes per hour of ads, one device, streaming only (no downloading for planes/etc), 720p max, 10% of the catalog unavailable. That’s a hell of a lot of compromises.
- soco 4y agoAnd the catalog was anyway steadily going down...
- Alupis 4y agoThey could probably honestly remove 10% of the catalog and nobody would miss anything. It feels like 80% of the catalog is Netflix homebrewed garbage, another 10% is foreign dubbed garbage, and the remaining 10% you've probably already seen. I honestly have never thought harder about outright cancelling Netflix. I'm very close... Every time I log in to watch something, Netflix recommends TV Shows and Movies they know I have already watched because I watched them on Netflix. The rest of the recommendations are Netflix original content, of which I find maybe less than 10% to actually be worth the time to watch. I have never before left so many movies and TV shows unfinished... and the list continues to grow. I cannot recall the last time I searched for a movie and found exactly what I was looking for. The value of Netflix has decreased sharply in the past few years.
- atlasunshrugged 4y agoI wonder how many people actually just rewatch their favorite shows over and over. I definitely do that with a few shows when I just want something easy (e.g. I'm cooking and put on an episode of Bob's Burgers in the background even though I've seen it a few times)
- caseyohara 4y agoI suspect a lot of people do this. A friend of mine listens to old familiar audiobooks they've heard dozens of times when they are trying to sleep. I can understand why people might find comfort in rewatching their favorite shows and listening to the same music they always have.
- SketchySeaBeast 4y agoI wonder who this new option is supposed to appeal to. Probably just an excuse to jack up the actual valid options to a higher price in comparison?
- Someone1234 4y agoOr for third parties to bundle "for free." For example Walmart+ bundles Paramount+'s ad tier. T-Mobile currently bundles the Ad-Free Basic/Standard depending on wireless plan, maybe they'll move to the Ad tier.
- zeven7 4y agoMy guess is it's for packages where you get Netflix included with something else. For example, you sign up for Verizon and get Netflix for 6 months. Now they have a cheap version of Netflix to give you.
- fumar 4y agoCorrect. This is the start of increasing prices and testing ads on other tiers.
- pastor_bob 4y agoThe old mackbook strategy
- mbg721 4y agoPeople who got six months of a Netflix subscription as a Christmas gift and got partway through a series,
- Someone1234 4y ago> a limited number of movies and TV shows won't be available due to licensing restrictions, which we’re working on This needs much more detail. What isn't available and in what regions?
- FortiDude 4y agoDo you think a streaming website which barely has actual categories to browse from, routinely autocompletes unlicensed shows in the search bar as if they were available and doesn't have a database to search which show is available in which country will actually provide those details to the public? lol
- callahad 4y agoCurious that the UK announcement, at https://about.netflix.com/en/news/our-newest-plan-now-available-gb https://about.netflix.com/en/news/our-newest-plan-now-availa..., mentions: > In the UK, there will also be nationally recognised brands such as HSBC, T-Mobile, GoCompare, Lidl and Ernest Jones. T-Mobile hasn't been a consumer-facing brand in the UK for at least seven years.
- rglullis 4y agoIt costs less than that to get a good privacy-protecting VPN (njalla, mullvad) and to set up all the *darr stack on your laptop. Just saying.
- pc86 4y agoWhere can someone get unbiased technical reviews of privacy-protecting/privacy-focused VPNs? Paid is fine, but every time I read a VPN review I feel like I'm about to get my pockets picked.
- rglullis 4y agoI know that this is not a proper review, but I just gave you the names of the only VPNs I used and trust. I prefer njalla because they don't even require any special app and just give you the configuration files if you want to use wireguard or OpenVPN.
- ridgered4 4y agoI have no opinion on njalla but every VPN I've used will give you OpenVPN configuration files to use, I actually think it is pretty common.
- rglullis 4y agoRight, but there are also all those other providers who wants you to use their own app. "Being able to connect only with a configuration file" is a necessary but not sufficient condition on my checklist.
- mdm_ 4y ago> We are excited to begin rolling out a new plan at $6.99/month from November 3 in the US. You have to click through the link to see that "in the US" actually means > Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Spain, the UK and the US.
- falcolas 4y agoTo me, this action speaks of the continued fall of Netflix. If their content can't support them with subscriptions, it probably won't support them with subscriptions plus intrusive brain worms, err, ads. This is a pattern seen all the time in gaming - a subscription service downgrades to F2P, then a vast majority of them go away. The differences between the successes and failures comes down to content, not business models. And Netflix' content is very thin for my tastes.
- snapcaster 4y agohaven't F2P games become so widespread because they're much _more_ profitable? I think you're letting your own opinions on this substitute for some kind of business analysis
- falcolas 4y agoNote that specifically, I'm talking about games that have made the transition. Like WildStar, Rift, Warhammer Online, et.al. Sure, F2P games (which are never just ad supported, mind you) can be wildly popular and profitable. But not all of them. For every exploitative success like Diablo Immortal, there are thousands of games which hit the app stores and quietly vanished.
- ss108 4y agoThis reminded me to cancel Netflix after I revived it briefly to watch season 2 of the Dota anime lol
- pastor_bob 4y agoI wonder if they'll force their Netflix produced shows to be structured like network TV ones where optimal moments are created for ad placement. Ads otherwise are extremely jarring.
- Arubis 4y agoOn day 0, this probably doesn't affect most folks here. The option to not have ads remains, and thus far at the same-ish price, hand-waving preexisting upward adjustments. Most of the brouhaha around this will be pricing-related: will Netflix use this to boost their prices???? Will I have to pay more?????? I dunno. Maybe. Doesn't seem unlikely. I don't really care, though, to be honest. $5 a month doesn't make a huge difference. What concerns me is that this changes Netflix's incentive structure. Prior to this change, Netflix had one customer base: the viewers. So content was produced with the primary goal of making the viewers happy, enough so to continue paying them month over month. Now, the shift is towards also having another customer base: advertising buyers. Will they have direct input into what content is produced? If not direct, will they have the right of refusal, or pressure? "We won't put our ads next to that" will likely reduce the amount of "that" being produced. Additionally, since ads are shown per time block, this adds an incentive to produce content that takes longer to watch rather than content that you can enjoy in concentration.
- tomjen3 4y agoYou are not wrong, but they had ads before: it was just called product placements. For example their Swiss Family Robinson (but in space) had a 15-20 minute segment of an episode about a packet of Oreos.
- jimbob45 4y agoI looked it up and oof that's rough. It almost seems like a YouTube parody account photoshopped the oreos in. https://vimeo.com/418604619 https://vimeo.com/418604619
- an_aparallel 4y agoholy shit - this is aweful. I have, for a long time refused to watch any netflix produced content - i almost dont care about the diamonds in the rough after seeing stuff like this.
- daniel-cussen 4y ago
- JohnFen 4y agoSince Netflix is now in the ads game, I can't trust it even if I do avoid the ad-supported tier. I have to assume that they're now gathering my data and making it available to advertisers anyway. Another service destroyed (for me) by advertising.
- fumar 4y agoAdvertising that is partially powered by Microsoft. Yes, Netflix is selling audience data.
- w10-1 4y agoIt strikes me that supporting ads has a huge impact on the technical infrastructure. It complicates server deployment and client UI. And how would you tailor markets to regions? subscriber preferences? coveted spots (just before that cliff-hanger...)? Oy I'd be interested in ballpark resource estimates for added complexity and staffing for operations and for the ad business units. Most importantly, is most of the cost up-front in infrastructure development, or do the ad business units themselves eat so much they don't make sense below a certain level of adoption? i.e., - How many ad-supported users does Netflix need for the ad tier to justify its fixed and operational costs? - What about cannibalizing the higher tiers? Can ads end up being a net revenue loss even if they pay for themselves? - If it is complicated and hard, and they get it right, can it be a moat for them? Way too many questions.
- tinyspacewizard 4y agoNetflix keep making content. How long until they have so much that we are content just to explore the back catalogue? Can margins increase massively over the long run?
- gcau 4y agoAnyone have recommendations for setting up a mini home server to download and store torrented movies? I want something that "kinda just works", like what hardware and software? Only for movies I have consent and rights to torrent, ofcourse.
- yrgulation 4y agoI am not a fan of movie piracy and as such i would recommend you stay away from kodi and irc. Deluge web torrent is the worst offender. All of these run on raspberry pis with huge usb storage extensions. Those tools are horrible and i dont recommend plugging in raspberry pi via hdmi to your tv or setting up file sharing. Even worse i dont recommend setting up pihole dns on the same rpi as it hides ads.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- herbst 4y agoA Synology NAS works well for this as a 'just works' plus plenty of space configuration
- Manuel_D 4y agoPeople seem to forget that Hulu has been supported by this model for quite some time. In some ways, it's a return to form: television was historically supported by ads and is returning to ads for support.
- Arubis 4y agoThat form sucked. The break was nice.
- solarkraft 4y agoNetflix has had ads for a long time. They call it "product placement" and "branded entertainment".