cross-posted from: slrpnk.net/post/6302705
Yo-ho, all together Hoist the coloooors high…
Commercials Are Streaming’s New Norm, and Creators Aren’t Happy: “It’s Almost Worse Than Broadcast”
Submitted 9 months ago by ZeroCool@slrpnk.net to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
AllonzeeLV@lemmy.world 9 months ago
0110010001100010@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Yup, streaming has just become cable v2. I dusted off the VPN and went back to that. As a famous someone once said:
Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem
If the experience with piracy is FAR superior to streaming you can guess which way I’m going to go…
tacosanonymous@lemm.ee 9 months ago
Pirating is work. Streaming was convenience.
The less convenient streaming is, the more likely I’m willing to work.
KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml 9 months ago
Was work
anivia@lemmy.ml 9 months ago
Piracy is not a lot of work nowadays. Setting it up once takes some time, but after that everything is automated. If I want to watch a movie or show, I enter my overseer URL into a browser, search the name of it, click on request, and a few minutes later it will be ready to watch on my Plex and Jellyfin, that are also shared with friends and family so they can also browse my library and request stuff easily
jordanlund@lemmy.world 9 months ago
What I want to know is how much money could insurance companies (cough, Liberty Mutual, cough) POSSIBLY be saving people when they are buying ads on every video on Youtube.
poayjay@lemmy.today 9 months ago
I always wondered what if someone started an insurance business that didn’t spend billions on advertisements, it just offered genuinely lower rates. When you sign up you have to sign something promising you’ll tell 2 other people.
c0mbatbag3l@lemmy.world 9 months ago
“We can’t lower prices! Look at how much we have to spend!!”
Points at billions in ad slots being watched by mostly AI now
abysmalpoptart@lemmy.world 9 months ago
There are plenty of insurance companies that are like this. They’re significantly cheaper than the nationally advertised insurance options.
gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
The Market Basket of insurance companies - solid, quality products, at a reasonable price, because they simply don’t do any marketing.
Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 9 months ago
That’s what you’re seeing. Not what I’m seeing. Welcome to the wonderful world of targeted ads.
I only get Doctor Drew telling me stuff is a metabolism killer.
Wrench@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I get douche bros peddling instant meal powder crap. Which I have never, ever, looked for or researched, but my wife’s shopping habits tend to dictate my ads, even though we’re on completely different devices.
Mr_Blott@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I mostly get ads for stuff I’ve researched online; anything I buy for the house, kitchen, or simply tools for business, I make sure is “Buy It For Life” quality
Targeted ads are hilarious. Yes, Google, I did. I did just buy a pair of Knipex Cobra pipe grips. That will be the last time ever I buy them, and they will still be hanging around a secondhand shop 150 years after I’ve turned to fuckin dust. The advert for Shungong Best Grip is a fuckin waste of electrons
jordanlund@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Weird then that I don’t need insurance and am not looking for insurance…
Peppycito@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
Lol, I get eavestrough filters and fat guy t-shirts. They can tell I’m an old fucker but not that I’m skinny as hell
Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee 9 months ago
They’d lose money. Advertising works - that’s why companies are doing it.
MammyWhammy@lemmy.ml 9 months ago
jaybone@lemmy.world 9 months ago
It is worse than broadcast.
If you learn anything about screenwriting, there are certain patterns and structures you follow (like acts in a play) to accommodate commercials, like to build suspense and keep the viewer interested and not changing the channel.
Streaming never had this, if you look at shows written for these platforms. The writers either ignored or didn’t even know about these conventions.
Now adding commercials later, it is even more annoying to the viewer as the original material was not meant to accommodate them.
Streaming just keeps fucking up. I already canceled my netflix. I’m on basic cable for network tv and I just pirate everything else.
XTornado@lemmy.ml 9 months ago
Wait… They add advertising in the middle of shows? I thought it would be at the beginning, between episodes, on the UI, etc.
clay_pidgin@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
Nope, it’s classic ad breaks, but since the shows weren’t made expecting them the ads just appear suddenly every X minutes instead.
VicksVaporBBQrub@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
By streamers ignoring all the decades of broadcasting experience, and all established what’s fair air-time for both content and commercial. That’s the frustration… they’re rewriting standards. And doing it poorly. And at top speed.
shyguyblue@lemmy.world 9 months ago
And with streaming, you’re not locked into a 42-47 minute long episode either, so are some episodes going to have more, or is there someone with a stop watch going “this seems like a good place for an ad break”?
laverabe@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Why are you on basic cable for network tv? It’s broadcast over the air in HD for free.
hardcoreufo@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Some people live in areas with poor service even with beefy antennas.
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Get an hdhomerun or equivalent for local TV at home in a streaming format. It even integrates into Plex for DVR.
pirat@lemmy.world 9 months ago
A cheaper solution (if you’re already running a server) would be TVheadend and a cheap USB-dongle for DVB-T, DVB-C or DVB-S.
TheDoozer@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Okay, I need to say it: having an ad for your own programming is still an ad.
Paramount. I’m looking at you, Paramount. I don’t want to watch your shitty movie/TV show/whatever about the shitty mom from the His Dark Materials series losing another kid. Stop playing the same goddamn ad for it before every episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Especially since you feel the need to double whatever goddamn volume I have set in the opening to the ad. I pay for the subscription, I already bought your product. Fuck off with your shitty ad.
I mean, others do it too and it pisses me off, but I’m on Season 2 of TNG and I may just have to get it some other way and canceling Paramount because that ad has started really getting to me.
KredeSeraf@lemmy.world 9 months ago
When a company gets that hostile in their design to their paying customers is when I start advocating for flying a Jolly Roger.
ji17br@lemmy.ml 9 months ago
Honestly, a preview for another show on the same service doesn’t bother me AS LONG AS it is skippable. I’ve never used paramount so I’m not sure if that’s the case.
If I’m being honest when I was a kid part of the fun of going to the movies was the previews before, finding out about upcoming movies and what not.
I do agree that you shouldn’t see the same preview every episode cause that’s super annoying. But I’d be totally fine with one per session or something. Again, as long as it’s skippable right from the start.
elrik@lemmy.world 9 months ago
It’s not skippable as far as I can tell. It also frequently advertises shows I’ve already watched. Sometimes it advertises the show I’m trying to watch.
I’m pretty sure it also has the “ad counter” showing on the screen during this as well.
Here’s what they call it in their docs:
You’ll also see a quick preview only once per day before any show to keep you up-to-date on our original programming.
It’s not an ad, it’s a “preview.” /s
LastYearsPumpkin@feddit.ch 9 months ago
They advertise as extra $ for ad free, but then they put ads in it. That’s dishonest.
What I have to do whenever I watch a show is start the show, get the pre-roll, exit out, then start the show again. It’s annoying and a stupid hoop to jump through just to not have to watch the same pre-roll over and over.
Itsamelemmy@lemmy.zip 9 months ago
Still annoying, but hit back and restart the episode. So far that’s caused it to start without the ad for me.
TheDoozer@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Thanks, I’ll try that!
Dark_Dragon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 months ago
That is the problem. Why should i be doing that? Aren’t I paying them for my convenience? At this rate pirating sites make me do lesser hassle than the legit sites.
WallEx@feddit.de 9 months ago
Prime has been doing this for ages
JASN_DE@lemmy.world 9 months ago
And it has been nothing but annoying since they started.
Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg 9 months ago
Paramount definitely seems to be the worst about this … their app in general is really frustrating.
Max does it occasionally but it’s rare enough I don’t notice.
JasSmith@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
Yes! I pay for an ad free experience on YouTube but support tells me that ads for their own products don’t count. Fuckers.
agitatedpotato@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Just here to remind everyone while piracy is important, it’s also very umto tech the less tech savy among your acquaintances how to pirate too. Conglomerates only learn when their bottom line is effected after all, so teach all your friends how to hoist that black flag.
nexusband@lemmy.world 9 months ago
IF you go down that route, there needs to be a warning: Do it properly, use a VPN if you are torrenting, get a usenet account if you want fast speeds that encrypts the connection and so on - basically, teach it correct.
Shadywack@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Or they send a DMCA to your ISP, and then your ISP gives you 3 warnings and a boot. VPN is the way.
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
Used DVDs at pawn shops and thrift stores ftw.
Lorindol@sopuli.xyz 9 months ago
This. Just yesterday I bought a batch of films, DVD’s 1$ and Blu-Rays 1,5$ a piece. And they were mostly new films.
DVD’s are perfectly fine for TV and Blu-Rays for my projector.
I never jumped to the streaming bandwagon and my disc collection has grown exponentially in the last few years, since most people gave up on discs. Their loss.
pineapplepizza@lemm.ee 9 months ago
Any tips to get started?
shrugal@lemm.ee 9 months ago
I think Debrid services are the easiest to get started. They download files for you from various services (Share hoster and Torrents), and then let you download them from their servers. That means only they know your IP but don’t log it (like a VPN), and they also download with full speed from sites that require a premium account, with a fraction of the cost. With RealDebridClient you can also use some of them with Arr apps, once you get to automating the process.
Another thing would be Usenet. It’s surprisingly easy to set up and get started, just find a provider and some indexers. It has a ton of good content, and it doesn’t depend on seeders for high download speeds.
Boiglenoight@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I considering piracy after Netflix came out. Does it have ads yet.
InternetUser2012@midwest.social 9 months ago
I had subscriptions to 4 different streaming sites. They pull bullshit and I cancelled. I now watch everything on one site with better quality streams and no commercials for the cost of a nice vpn. I didn’t drop them because I can’t afford it, I dropped them because their service sucked and I’m not going to deal with or support that BULLSHIT.
cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
What site is this?
Reddfugee42@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I love torrents but my uncle is always talking about Flixtor
Lemonparty@lemm.ee 9 months ago
What site? DM if you’d rather not comment. I ain’t no snitch
Hammerheart@programming.dev 9 months ago
If also like to know what site this is so i can avoid it. I DMed you.
LinkOpensChest_wav@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 months ago
Paid services with ads are unconscionable and should not be supported, but I do watch Tubi or Pluto sometimes, and it’s not nearly as bad as the amount of ads I see on my parents’ screen with cable
Chetzemoka@startrek.website 9 months ago
Agreed, in my experience Tubi and Pluto both have very reasonable length, good quality ads. I declined to re-up on YouTube TV for NCAA football season this year specifically because I can stand their ads. At that price tier, they honestly expect me to sit through My Pillow ads??
ovalofsand@lemmy.world 9 months ago
The ads are so much less anxiety inducing as well. At least, on Pluto they are
realitista@lemm.ee 9 months ago
I’m using this streaming service called Sonarr+plex. No ads so far.
erwan@lemmy.ml 9 months ago
Kinda, Plex still changes my homepage with their ads once in a while
w2tpmf@lemmy.world 9 months ago
One of many reasons to use Jellyfin instead of Plex.
clif@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I dropped prime after the announcement… Who’s next?
MeekerThanBeaker@lemmy.world 9 months ago
What pisses me off is that I signed up for a year last summer. This change should not have happened for people who already paid for Prime.
With shipping getting worse, yeah … I’m cancelling that.
Guess Bezos doesn’t have enough money.
LinkOpensChest_wav@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 months ago
Are you even getting two-day shipping anymore? I canceled Prime last year because my non-Prime items were arriving well before my Prime ones, with Prime sometimes taking two weeks.
With their sucky shipping, having to navigate a minefield of cheap trash-tier products, and now their video service getting riddled with ads – I think if Amazon were just being introduced to the world in its current state, no one would even use it. We’d consider it a joke.
All Amazon has going for it anymore is that it’s known and people use it out of habit.
_sideffect@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Because they HAVE to increase their share values year after year; just making billions isn’t good enough, they have to make more billions compared to the last year.
It’s truly pure greed, as streaming was amazing when it first started, and Netflix was making a killing even back then. But now, nope, fuck you all, we want more and more until we can’t squeeze anything more out from you.
It’s why I’ve increased my kodi/real debrid usage over the past few years
stochasticity@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Hoist the colors
steelrat@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I’m amazed that they have any customers paying to listen to ads. I wont stand for it and I find it surprising others would.
ScaNtuRd@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I haven’t used streaming services in a couple of years. Now I’m just doing all piracy and watching it through my Jellyfin server
Snowpix@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
Anf it’s a heave-ho-hi-ho, comin’ down the Bay Stealin’ films and movies and all the other games And it’s a ho-hey-hi-hey, corpos bar your doors When you see the Jolly Roger on Francisco’s mighty shores!
Well, you’d think the local corpos would know that I’m at large But just the other day I found an unprotected RAR I snuck up right behind them and they were none the wiser I grabbed the film and “stole” it, and screwed the advertiser
Xenny@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I let all my streaming subscriptions die off when my debit card expired this year and I haven’t looked back. Gaming is cheaper and more entertaining. All the new movies I would want to watch never make it to streaming services anyway
gapbetweenus@feddit.de 9 months ago
Stop supporting greedy bastards that are trying to push hard psychological manipulation down you throat, only for you to buy so shit no-one needs.
cozy_agent@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Got Disney plus subscription for free through some other stuff I need to have, but it’s the ad supported standard plan, you pay and still get loads of ads. Even with the subscription I just download stuff for my Jellyfin.
JoMiran@lemmy.ml 9 months ago
🏴☠️
badbytes@lemmy.world 9 months ago
As I ironically, read the article, ads kept appearing over text.
someguy3@lemmy.world 9 months ago
So are commercial randomly placed, or are the shows paced to have commercial breaks like the old tv days?
HawlSera@lemm.ee 9 months ago
Yo ho ho I took a bite of Gum Gum!
autotldr@lemmings.world [bot] 9 months ago
This is the best summary I could come up with:
After a swift click on “not now,” this viewer cued up one of the more successful titles currently gracing Amazon’s roster — the second season of beefcake vigilante drama Reacher.
Interruptions, which included a spot for another series (Hudson & Rex, starring a German Shepherd detective) and a reminder from the folks at Intuit Turbotax that filling season has commenced, were indeed limited.
“We fought so hard to get rid of commercials,” says Alan Poul, executive producer and director of Max original Tokyo Vice which returns for a second season on Feb. 8.
Paramount expands its own ad-supported tier internationally later in 2024 — and though no official plans have been announced, recent hires at Apple TV+ suggest the tech behemoth will eventually introduce ads as well.
David E. Kelley, the one-time broadcast golden boy who gave audiences Picket Fences, Chicago Hope and Ally McBeal before pivoting to premiere outlets like HBO (Big Little Lies) and Netflix (The Lincoln Lawyer), seems similarly disenchanted.
Netflix, which recently cited that 40 percent of all new sign-ups opt for ads, announced the “retirement” of its least expensive commercial-free tier in the coming second quarter.
The original article contains 1,205 words, the summary contains 191 words. Saved 84%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world 9 months ago
That’s a long article - here, put some music on while you read.
jeena@jemmy.jeena.net 9 months ago
I have a hard time understanding why a option to view it either with ads or pay money to not show ads is bad.
I understand it’s frustrating that you already pay and still see ads.
In the end you choose to buy something from a company which sells something. Either you pay with your money or with your attention if you don’t want to pay, just don’t use their service.
I much rather have the option to pay to get rid of ads than not having it like it was in the 90ies.
Copernican@lemmy.world 9 months ago
TV economics are hard. I think where basic cable and network TV make it work is that the content was filmed in a way to have natural ad breaks to make it less disruptive to the viewing experience. That becomes terrible when you shoehorn ads into places they don’t belong. On the other hand, watching that content without ad breaks that was filmed with ad breaks also plays out weird because you’ll have that commercial cliffhaner music/scene that is quickly followed with resolution before you have time to wonder “what is going to happen?” So shit gets weird when you have a tier model where some people get ad breaks and others don’t because your content isn’t made to satisfy both use cases.
TV is expensive to make and these are businesses that make money. A simple reductive “if user pays any money they deserve no ads” problem. It’s a challenge of things like “The business needs to make X dollars per user and if we have ads we need to charge Y bucks where Y = X - expected ad revenue.” The other challenge is in order to have an ad business you need to convince advertisers you have ad viewers they want to reach. Well, advertisers like rich people with lots of money, and they probably don’t have the cheaper ad supported tiers. So can a TV company really support a completely ad free tier? Or do they still need to serve some, but less ads, to make sure their advertisers know they can get their ads seen by the platforms richest users?
MrShankles@reddthat.com 9 months ago
Went to check out the “Mr and Mrs Smith” series on Prime (with Donald Glover), and was notified that there would be ads now unless I upgraded. I almost never watch anything on Prime, but figured “why not, I already have it”… and then immediately closed it when I saw that message. Switched back over to Stremio, cause why the fuck would I watch ads when I already pay for the service? Gotta convince the wife to cancel Prime, but it’s next on the chopping block. Only ones left will be youtube music (family still uses it) and Debrid (which will stay for as long as it’s good). Netflix, Hulu, Disney, ESPN, HBO… all of them gone
Jaysyn@kbin.social 9 months ago
This is why I'm sailing the high seas again.
Because the underlying conditions are the same as last time.
TheFriar@lemm.ee 9 months ago
Even if the creators weren’t pissed, the entire selling point of streaming was on demand, ad free, and a large library to choose from. Every single streaming service that subdivided Netflix and Hulu’s content shares have reneged on that entire concept by creating smaller libraries, making them unaffordable, and now they’re shoehorning in ads if we won’t cough up more money.
It’s almost like a moral imperative to pirate from these fuckers.
Wojwo@lemmy.ml 9 months ago
The entire selling point of cable was no signal loss and ad free… Then the point of satellite was more options and ad free. Those sneaky ads keep finding their way in.
gapbetweenus@feddit.de 9 months ago
Ads is basically free money for broadcasters. And since greed is the main motivation - the dissension seems to be rather easy for them.
porksoda@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Don’t forget that on-demand is being reduced as well now that many platforms are trickling out episodes for their marquee shows at a weekly rate. Looking at you Apple.
MammyWhammy@lemmy.ml 9 months ago
I much prefer the trickle of releases to a lump season dump.
It allows time to digest, discuss and catch up throughout the release schedule if you’re invested in the story. You can convince your friends to watch a few episodes to catch up and then watch the end of the season together. You can read fan theories online, formulate your own, and overall each weekly episode can result in a lot of engaging fun interactions.
With a series dump you have to binge it and wait for others to do the same in order to talk about it. The whole time you’re actively avoiding spoilers from friends/coworkers and avoiding reading about it online. The end result is you disengage from the fandoms/communities while you are getting through the show, which to me takes a lot of the fun out of a big show.
I compare the difference between Stranger Things and GoT. To me these are probably two of the most significant pop-culture releases in the last decade or so.
Game of Thrones resulted in hundreds of thousands of theories every week online and in public. T-Shirts were made based on popular online theories that never panned out in season. You would rag on friends who guessed the plot twist wrong and deify those who got their predictions spot on. Especially in my demographic the two months GoT was on was all about GoT.
Stranger Things on the other hand, while still wildly popular hits differently. It’s much more of a build up to release, a week or two of “man that was awesome” followed by “I hope they make the next season soon.” Retroactive discussions happen for a while, but the discussions and the hype fizzles much more quickly.
If I want to watch a trickle release show in one dump, I still can, I just wait until the whole season out, reactivate the subscription. Then I binge it.
For me it’s much more fun to have an episode or two a week and build momentum through a season than it is to set off a one time firework.
Firenz@lemmy.world 9 months ago
There is a simple solution for that. Rotate your services every 3 months, watch the entire season and only come back when there’s something to watch.
Quality over quantity is something streaming services can’t do. There’s so much shit shoved in our faces that I find myself watching less and less. Is a crash on the horizon or can the market sustain the number of active participants?
It’s a real shame because piracy is bridging the service gap which the industry themselves managed to eliminate, albeit briefly, only to introduce it again.
HAL_9_TRILLION@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 months ago
In my opinion, some people get what they deserve. If you trust any corporate media concern to not succumb to enshittification, then you deserve to watch your stupid commercials. You paid for the privilege because you enabled the abuser.
I prefer to get what I pay for and I pay for nothing. If I watch ads, it’s because I’m watching something like the Super Bowl with my OTA DVR that’s playing on network TV. It’s free, so OK - commercials. If I’m watching anything else, it’s on my Plex server and there are no commercials.
I do pay for entertainment. I pay for experiences, like going to the movies, going to live rock shows, going to performances or exhibitions - all IRL - but that’s about it. I might consider paying for other entertainment options but there is one thing I won’t ever do: I won’t pay for media that I don’t own.
Empricorn@feddit.nl 9 months ago
“People deserve to be exploited because they dared to use a convenient, affordable service.”
Seriously, what a bad take. It’s not like I gave them all my passwords and Power of Attorney! It’s fine your budgeting decisions work for you, but you shouldn’t cheer on companies providing a bad experience to customers that “trust” them…
gapbetweenus@feddit.de 9 months ago
You understand that someone has to pay for that entertainment shit you use to kill your time with? You are literally shitting on people who are paying for you.