26
votes
The Wild West of streaming TV is here and it’s free. Welcome to FAST: The free, ad-supported, streaming television bargain bin.
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- Title
- The Wild West of streaming TV is here and it's free
- Authors
- Sara Morrison
- Published
- May 24 2023
- Word count
- 2553 words
And so the circle is complete. You used to pay for cable and watch ads along with your shows. There was a brief glorious window when there were no ads. Now you'll pay for internet that uses the same hardware and watch ads along with your shows. There are some improvements, but also data harvesting to go along with it.
Hooray, more 'engagement', the thing responsible for many of the worst parts of the internet. Get ready for an influx of Youtube addiction style content, probably with a service specifically aimed at all the content so hateful that even Google would crack down on it.
That's despicable.
Best part of the wild west is it comes with extra piracy.
I find it funny how content owners will simultaneously put out ads about pirates hurting creators whilst coming up with new novel ways to pay creators less.
"Hey, only I get to abuse my creators"
When there is something I want to watch that is exclusive to an ad-supported platform, I will pirate it instead.
I have no problem paying for content, but I draw the line at having my content interrupted with advertisements.
You wouldn't download a car would you? Yes if it was available on the pirate bay! Not sure if anyone remembers that anti piracy add or if it was just a UK thing
We had them in the US too. :)
I don't see any of the larger players ditching their ad-free offerings.
There isn't enough money in advertising. I'm pretty firmly convinced that Hulu or Netflix make more money off a customer on an ad-free tier than and ad-supported one. And unlike cable, there is no logistical or technological barrier that makes price discrimination non-viable.
There is a huge market of people who don't want to pay for any content, and that is where these bargain-bin FAST services come in. Their anemic libraries full of old reruns and cheaply made new crap is reflective of this.
I don't have any statistics to back me up on this, but I suspect that you're underestimating just how much money there is in advertising. Facebook and Google are two of the largest companies in the world whose value comes almost entirely from selling ads. The studios that fight tooth and nail against paying their writers a fair wage will happily spend tens of millions of dollars on advertising.
Furthermore, I suspect we're transitioning from the consumer-courting phase of streaming services to the enshittification phase. There's nothing executives would like more than to be able to charge ad-free prices while still including the ads, and they're going to try their best to make that a reality.
There are two factors that allow Facebook and Google to make a lot more money off ads than a service like Netflix.
Scale. Google and Facebook have far more users than Netflix could ever hope to have, and their users are plugged into them nearly 24/7. Their services also provide a lot more surface area for ads to be distributed. Think about how often the average person checks their email, looks something up on the internet, scrolls through social media, or visits any website that uses Google or Facebook for advertising.
Quality of advertising. Google and Facebook have an unprecedented view into the demographics, habits, and preferences of their users. This means ads on their platforms can be hyper-targeted. They can charge a lot more for impressions because those impressions are more likely to convert to sales.
Even with these factors in their favor, Facebook's average revenue per user was about $4.50 for all of Q1 2023.
Those are fair points. I definitely overestimated how lucrative ads are as a revenue source. I appreciate the added context; I loathe ads in general, so it's good to hear that they're not as inevitable as I had been pessimistically assuming.
If you want another takeaway, ads being worth so little is also why creators push Patreon and donations. They make more money off a fan donating $5 than years of the fan viewing videos or a website with ads.
I try to support creators directly, finances permitting. My dream would be an internet where most content is available for free with no ads, so that people without funds can still participate, but creators still make a good living off of voluntary donations. It's something that will likely never be fully reached, but I think things are closer than they once were; the general vibe I get is that people are much more willing to actually support creators directly than they used to be, where the vibe was often free or nothing.
YouTubers also make significantly more money off a view from a YT Premium user than a free user. It's why I don't mind paying for the service when everyone else says to use an adblocker or Vanced.
I know this is a bit old, but I wanted to clarify that there really is more money in subscriptions than advertising. Google and Facebook make boatloads of money off selling ads, but there's a reason Google advertises YouTube Premium so heavily.
A user paying $10/month is guaranteed income regardless of how much content they consume, and they're financially invested in the service. Creators on YouTube actually earn more money per premium view, compared to ads. Paying for content means business models can be more consumer friendly. Developers don't need to add a bunch of dark patterns since they already have your money and just need to make sure the subscription isn't cancelled.
I wholeheartedly agree that subscription models mean that business incentives and consumer interests are significantly more closely aligned, but subscriptions making more per consumer is only half the equation. The lower the subscription price the larger the potential market, with a massive bump when a service reaches the completely free level. That's especially the case when times are tough, which speaking for the country I'm in is definitely the case.
But the way I see it shaking out, companies are always going to try to suck more out of each customer. Subscriptions are nice, but getting that and still selling ads would be even better. I think the end result will be that each streaming service will have a free-with-ads library, a subscription that gives the whole catalogue still with ads option, for around the price as ad-free streaming options now, and a super expensive no ads package, so rich people don't have to deal with the annoyance and to make the streaming with ads look like a more reasonable price.
This is why price discrimination is extremely popular. You capture all the $15/mo subscriptions from people willing to pay it, while still making money off more price-sensitive consumers who might be OK with ads.
There is a lot of negativity here regarding these. But I have to tell you my grandparents have started using roku and Pluto and they have been loving the crap out of all these free services.
They get on and watch westerns and other old films from the 70s that don't air often on cable and because it's good old cheap entertainment they don't have to worry about any subscription drama and they get to watch the TV they know.
I personally would never use it, because I'm a YouTube fan all the way, but it has its place and they're doing a worthwhile job.
Yeah, I'll be honest; I was a bit surprised by all the negativity too. Don't get me wrong, I understand everyone's concerns about ads, and data harvesting. But a lot of the shows and movies on these services simply weren't available for streaming anywhere legally in the past, and were often even hard to track down via piracy, so I'm happy to see them finally showing up somewhere... even if it is only on ad-supported streaming services right now.
I have tubi.tv bookmarked because it has a lot of obscure content. One of my favorite genres is low budget exploitation slasher films from the 70s-80s, and tubi has them in troves!
Umm, thank you, but I would not touch it with a 10 foot pole. I don't care if it's free, I want nothing to do with ads.