Cambiare canale: lo streaming TV è a un punto di svolta poiché la maggior parte degli abbonati del Regno Unito opta per la pubblicità
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/dec/26/tv-streaming-turning-point-most-uk-subscribers-opt-for-ads
di Skavau
25 commenti
A lot of people don’t mind ads. They can just pick their phone up and scroll for a minute or two.
I think that’s also why a lot of people support the end of the TV license fee; they’d rather it was free and ad funded.
I hate ads but I’ve worked them into my routine, depending how long the ads are I’ve actually paused ads whilst I nipe to the loo.
I tried it, but it doesn’t work for me.
So I don’t subscribe.
Because they more than doubled the price to not have ads? I was paying £5 a month for Netflix without ads, which is now £13 for the same plan. The ad version is £5.99.
A lot of places did this, YouTube being another: they reel you in with a free or low cost service and get their numbers up then slowly remove all those great features that got you hooked then offer them you back at a premium price. It’s bollocks.
> “We’re now reaching an inflection point in the streaming world,” said Richard Broughton, the executive director at Ampere Analysis. “This is a significant about-turn from the earlier years of streaming, in which streamers eschewed advertising for a pure ad-free subscription model.”
They’re pitching this as a change in consumer preferences – and conveniently ignoring the fact that the cost of normal plans has risen well above inflation since they were introduced. Enshittification strikes again..
Personally I don’t watch anything with ads if I can help it… if an ad-free experience is too expensive I just look for another entertainment source, can just not watch a show if it comes to it. Guess looking at the article my view is the minority now though.
I’ve never watched an ad that makes me want to go buy something, I just scroll through the phone, so they can screen ads as much as they want im used to it.
The changing preference is not about whether we are ok with ads, it is whether we mind paying a ridiculous sum of money to watch a streaming service.
Customer numbers are going to drop as people service hop – most don’t have the depth of quality catalog.
We’re not opting for ads, we’re opting not to spend money.
If they show ads, they shouldn’t be allowed to charge a subscription fee, and vice versa. One or the other.
Streamers entered the market, undercut everyone and churned out high budget, quality movies and TV with little to no profit and are now realising that cinema tickets cost what they do because it costs a lot of money to make quality productions.
Either they can slash the budget or hike prices; they’ve decided to do both.
So are we going to start seeing streaming companies bending to advertiser preferences and censoring certain topics and points of view? I’m more concerned about that than the ads themselves, although with that being said, I wouldn’t watch with ads either.
We are a country full of broke people and the offerings get worse and worse. Of course people are going to be slightly inconvenienced to save the cash.
It might have something to do with the fact that you can just instal a free ad blocker and watch ad free on the cheaper plan anyway
I would like the government to impose the same rules on streaming as broadcast TV when it comes to ads. No more than 15mins of ads per hour.
Streaming services show you five mins of ads whenever you change the show you’re watching. If the app crashes, boom! More ads.
If the streamer can’t figure out how many minutes of ads you’ve seen in the past hour because of crashes or network issues, they should assume you’ve seen the maximum already.
I accept ads on Amazon as I would pay for prime anyway and don’t feel like I’m paying for the streaming service. I get Disney for free with my banking so again I don’t care if it’s got ads. I pay for Netflix though and have the package without ads
I left Netflix a couple of years ago when it went to £10-13 a month, didn’t even realise there was a cheaper ad version available. I’m not going back, fuck ‘em.
Prime Video now has ads all over, so I’ve cancelled that given I don’t order all that much over the year for delivery anyway, and now I’m just running down the clock (getting in my AppleTV free week in as well – really enjoyed Dark Matter, now blasting through Silo!). Fuck them all, see you on the high seas!
I’m going to settle for iPlayer/ITVX/4OD (despite ads on the latter two) as they’re free. Some decent films and TV on them!
£50 a year for all the tv I could ever want. Fuck these guys.
I fucking hate ads. I hate that I PAY for things that now still have ads and I hate the fact that so many people are shunning the BBC when it is the only truly ad free thing in existence.
The main issue will be when they make the contracts bigger and not month to month cancel any time
It’s the idiots like the people who PAY subscriptions which INCLUDE ads that make it worse for everyone else. If people voted with their wallets properly, the world would be a much better place. Why would you pay to see ads? The companies are literally pissing themselves laughing to the bank.
People are dumb, they funded Sky to sell them the same things they were already watching, but for more money and with ads… Now they’re doing the same again with streaming services.
Thankfully with the severe lack of anything worth watching on any individual service, there’s no reason to actually stay subscribed to any of them.
That’s exactly what they want you to do because they make very little from you as a subscriber but a huge amount if you pay for ads and the brands pay for the ad spots. No brainer.
Everyone should learn to pirate. These streaming services are a total racket now. I used to happily pay for Netflix when it actually had (almost) everything, let you log in from multiple screens, and did throw up blocks when just using a VPN. It wasn’t about the money – Netflix was simply more convenient and a better service than piracy.
That balance has swayed now. It’s more effort to watch content legally than it is illegally.
But think of poor, penniless Netflix, who could barely scrape together 80 Billion dollars to acquire Warner Brothers! They didn’t have a choice but to shove adverts down your throat, honest!