Why do steaming services think they have a captive audience and I'm not going to ditch all of them with the crazy influx of annoying ads?

A: they’re betting most people will accept it, and they’re right. The same thing happened in the early 80s when cable television advertised themselves as the pay-for-ad-free service, then started sneaking ads in. People complained, sure, but we all saw the outcome. They got away with it.

B: Greed, capitalism, and fuck you.

The answer is apathy.

You have to remember that most users simply don't care. The majority of consumers are some combination of either not technologically savvy or just outright intimidated by technology, are not very well educated, are incredibly reluctant to read, are not particularly observant, will not leave their routines or comfort zones without very significant motivation, and have spent their entire lives being the very frog in that gradually boiling pot of ever more numerous and intrusive advertising to the point that they just accept this as "normal." They're busy. They don't read tech headlines. They don't understand what's going on under the hood, and nor do they want to.

Normal people don't see the world like us nerds do. I am positive that these streaming services (and many other businesses) have studied this and understand it very well. If they lose 1% of their business which was made up by vocal nerds, but whatever odious change the just rolled out results in an increase in profit that is greater than the revenue from those subscriptions lost, they'll go ahead and do it anyway.

They think they have a captive audience because by and large they functionally do have a captive audience. This stuff works, and people keep paying for it en masse.

You might ditch, but they have enough data that says enough other people aren't going to.

Just remember whenever you're annoyed by something and think "why is this a thing? This annoys me so it shouldn't happen", there's thousands of other people who can live with it or just don't give a shit.

Streaming services have a catastrophic problem they didn't see coming.

As they massively expanded the viewing market, they also gave very accurate viewing metrics compared to broadcast TV.

Also, the many, MANY offerings cut the viewing pie into smaller pieces.

And this is the expectation, mostly because while you might stay with a super hit like GoT, they're super expensive, and huge risks if they don't take off (see acolyte). Cost sensitive people are likely to subscribe for the season then cancel, or just subscribe the month the season finishes.

The alternative is to try to hook you on a bunch of shows, which means having a ton of them and hoping they nail your niche. People are less willing to do this, but it works if you have more disposable income, or value streaming more.

In any case, they can't afford all the shows they have to put on, it's all or nothing now, before they might watch lost on ABC one night, then CBS walker Texas ranger might let the kid fall on the ground the next, but now you have to keep them entertained most days, that's a shit-ton of content. HBO has it worse, they're losing their old cable revenue, and their productions are stupid expensive, and they're one of the winners. Disney has it even worse because disney+ cannibalizes both their cinema sales and they have to put up their crown jewels, star wars and the mcu, all on the same service, devaluing both. Fortunately focusing on kids programming helps because parents basically have to have Disney+ just as a matter of course.

This barely worked on broadcast because the different channels could share the load and cut the ad pie into larger pieces,

If they could count on must-watch blockbusters (ie GoT, which really hurt them when they screwed the landing and killed rewatchability), they could pull it off, but that's so risky, it's betting everything on one spin of the roulette wheel.

Because for every one person like you and me with zero ad tolerance, there's hundreds, thousands of plebs who can't be bothered to drop the service. It's the inverse of the whale (re. microtransactions) problem.

Wait till they drop you as a customer by cancelling your payment tier,then send you countless begging letters over the next month begging you to return. If you wanted my money that badly, why did you cancel me NETFLIX?????

I think about this a lot. In the 2000s, there would be all these music services that hype themselves up. The Downloadable Music Wars. We all used Napster or whatever pirating tool and it was just easier than paying. In the end, they were all smoke and mirrors and the services died out, while Apple and their iPods won.

In the late 2010s was the PC gaming Wars, Steam was really getting some heat. Not just other e-commerce stores like Epic, but also game streaming services like onLive and PC Game Pass. Again, all these wack ass companies (wtf Origin) and most of them have either folded or are on life support and migrated to Steam.

We're currently in the Streaming Wars. Probably the second or third version of this war, since the first war killed Blockbuster. I honestly don't believe many of them will survive past 2030. For sure Netflix and Hulu. Maybe half of them die, and six more will crop up. Who knows.

But what I do know is that whenever these "wars" occur, you see a lot of the shittier companies get worse and worse. And if you never picked a side and did your own thing (ignore them or sail the open seas), you get to look back and laugh at these clowns.

If they increase prices by 20% and lose 15% of their customer base, that's an increase in profit.

If they increase their ad duration by 50% and lose 15% of their customer base, that's a huge increase in profit.

Remember Netflix's password sharing ban outrage? It didn't work, they gained more subscribers. People stay because they don't know how to sail the high seas or are too lazy to do it.

Because how else am I going to get those deep creases out of my blouses!

Because the “you wouldn’t steal a car” nonsense scares a lot of people off

Because some people want to support the creators of content but digital downloads from iTunes or whatever are more expensive than getting a month of a streaming service

Because there is a level of convenience of having thousands of hours of content at your fingertips without having to store content locally or finding it on a “dodgy” website. Setting up torrents / usenet is more work than giving someone your credit card number

Because a lot of people don’t know where to find content and if they did they don’t know the difference between a 480p avi vs a 2160p HDR DV MKV and get confused with torrents and file formats and how to get them on their TV.

Because - at the moment - the ads aren’t that bad, I got one ad at the start and one episode in the middle of an episode of Gen V - obviously they’ll add more until it’s as bad as cable but they’re not there yet.

Because netflix tested it and it was worth it for them. The increased revenue from ads more than made up the subscription fees of users lost.

I have zero commercials on my Jellyfin instance.

Wife and I started watching the boys on prime. That's when I realized Amazon is putting ads in the stream.

I just ended up downloading all the seasons in an hour and it's been no ads on Kodi since.

https://fmhy.pages.dev/ <-- you might want to check this out because piracy is very wrong and horrible wink wink

This is just my opinion, but when Google(and... I don't know, "them?") started cracking down on the "letswatch" and 123movie sites, streaming was in a good place, so people happily jumped over. Now, in the time between that and the state of things now, some people lost their patience and skill with looking up a movie. Both my mom and grandma were fine with the 123movies and what not. The sites started to go down when Netflix was still alright, so it wasn't a big deal. Spend a couple dollars, get all the stuff you want and be sure it's the best quality, and no malware? Fantastic.

By the time it became this state of affairs, my mom just couldn't wrap her head around it. I tried to explain some sites are still there, you just may need to search duckduckgo (which she hates for some reason). She never understood torrenting even though we've gone over it multiple times. I've always liked anime or some shit that was not going to be on Netflix, so I kept using those "skills" and kept up with the changes. Moving to torrenting, a VPN, file converters, learning how to apply subtitles, one by one, over years, it's not a big deal. You just learn as you do. Having to come back to that after how much has changed ostracized a lot of people.

The people who aren't affected by them were never their main focus. They wanted the people who weren't tech savvy, lazy even. They can't figure out a torrent, or how to even find it in the first place. They won't know what to search for to protect themselves and will likely get scared by the first copyright notice. They're hoping that the majority of their customer base will be like that and feel "trapped."

Their entire survival hinges on keeping investment money flowing, which means they essentially have to lie and over-promise.

A chronic issue plaguing the entire tech and media sector right now. Line must go up no matter the costs.

What alternative? Every other service who does the same shit? Or even worse, setup jellyfin with sonarr server to completely automate everything and watch everything for absolutely free and continue to do so forever?? The shit some of these pirates do is disgusting.

Statistics. You're still there and only complaining. I purged all subscription parasites from my life in 2019.

I live by the abstraction, "you can't fix stupid in anyone else but yourself." All you can do is tell others what you did with your one wallet vote and hope that others do the same at some critical mass.

They do it because you're still there, and you care while they do not. You want to think you're human. You're not. You're a new deck chair on a yacht if you're lucky. Most likely, you're no more than a liter or few of diesel.

They don't care about you. They don't even want you as a subscriber, you're a pain in the ass. Most people are too tired and not tech savvy enough to pirate. A lot of those will eventually do something else, too, but they can cram ads into the streams faster than those people can find the wherewithal to leave.

In short, this is profitable, and no amount of raging will make it less so. Take care of yourself, but don't pretend you're making line go down.

Cos you haven't already. You're a par boiled frog and didn't even notice.

Pirates life for me

Hulu is treating me with impunity when I reported errors with their apps. Hulu, an eminently cancelable service that a lot of people never paid for in the first place.

Sail the seven seas, friends. These people deserve despondency.

They're banking on their service still being better. In the short term they assume their particular selection of content will provide some inertia to your decision to move, and long term they expect all of the other options are going to do the same thing. Eventually, you'll only be able to stream with commercials, and they'll be back to the balance of their content being the only deciding factor.

A vast number of users won’t switch

My steamers don't have any ads.

I've ditched all of them except the Disney/Hulu bundle, and that's only because Amex gives me back $7 a month of the cost.

Amazon Prime used to be okay as a Prime customer, but now you can't watch a 24 minute show without seeing like five ads. I tried to watch an episode of Invincible and there were two ads before the show even started, two in the middle of the show, and one at the end. It's freaking insane.

I barely even watch video these days, I get way more mileage out of a good music service like Qobuz or Tidal.

You're one person

🏴‍☠️

Remember when Netflix was totally dead and doomed when they cracked down on password sharing? And then it turned out people just upgraded to the new plan and kept on consuming.

Because most people aren't going to ditch them regardless of how many ads they put, and that's good enough for them.

Because they know most people are too lazy, too addicted, too lacking in tech for any other solution, so they'll take the abuse.

As Netflix constant raises showed, not enough people leave so they will enshitify to the max

Because they think you'll be too addicted to their content and offerings to quit

already ditched them most of them and moved to self hosting movies, TV shows and music. I'm still paying for music but the latest drama of losing tons of classics on YouTube music due to SESAC licensing has me rethinking what I'm even paying for.

Bcs they act as a monopoly in regards to alternatives.

They only slightly intend to compete against each other but pretend nothing else exist (pirates, or people just shifting towards other forms of entertainment).

And they are ofc in cahoots in the sense that their common goal is to normalise paying several hundred moneys per month for streaming services and have the streaming service full of ads regardless.
So in that sense they will not compete but back each other up.

Like land owners/landlords, their main goals are completely aligned.

And that is how 'market disruptions' actually work - its not to offer a new service to the end user (like Uber-ish services are the same as taxi services from the perspective of users), it's to undercut the existing regime with lower prices whilst living on capital given because of the promise that once the old regime is gone they can crank up the prices & actually profitable (we are actually just at this stage right now - watch how much monthly fees are gonna go up in just a few years).

Goal/end stage:
Users are gonna be glued to their ad-ridden TVs just the same as boomers but far better monetised (watching TV is gonna be expensive).

Television does it

Because of the people they loose due to the price hike, more will stay for the new price.

It’s always about the 💰💰💰they’re getting.

Already lots of great answers, but I'll add a note about intentional barriers to exit.

Many services tend to make it easy to sign up and comparably more difficult to quit. So while people always can leave and take their business elsewhere, they might not have the motivation to do it. I imagine each additional click in a form deters more and more people. OP mentioned being unmotivated, and these barriers play into that.

It's like wandering around in Ikea. You could use a map and chart out the fastest route to find what you need and get out. But it's so much easier to follow the little path they draw out on the floor and look at everything, which makes you way more likely to impulsively buy something extra.

You are just one drop in an ocean pal.

Because they're also going after piracy as hard as they can

They’re sure you will, or some will, but the number of customers they lose will be offset by the revenue gained.

Since that’s the only metric they really care about at the end of the day it makes “sense” to them to do it.

Because companies want more money and people get used to it.

ironically I only use the free add supported ones except for amazon but thats more due to my wife.

The economy is in a weird spot where data looks alright (employment and gdp) but the covid economy hit everyone including your friendly neighborhood corporation. Ads are a simple and reliable way to turn up profits in a soft economy and declining global situation and inflation. Since companies have effectively stolen wages for so many years they can't cope with modest wage spike on their bottom line or really any disruption anywhere in their business they use ads to print money. Maybe as time goes on business will benefit from slowing wage growth and increasing automation we will see ad growth scale back. Regulation would be nice but what are you going to do?

https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2021/03/COVID-inequality-and-automation-acemoglu.htm

https://www.atlantafed.org/blogs/macroblog/2024/06/27/are-real-wages-catching-up

People said this about Netflix a while back and I think they're profits actually went up so that's why.

The only way we’re going to do anything about this is by actively avoiding buying or using products we see advertised on streaming sites. I already do this with Amazon Prime but I doubt they even notice. It’d be great if this became a thing at Christmas, it could completely destroy the revenue stream for these massive cunts.

If you even started using streaming services, I've got bad news for you.

You are a statistic. The question isn't do you exist but how many of you exist. When there is enough money to be made by serving people like you with fewer ads someone will do it. Until then though you are not worth the money it costs too keep you so good riddance.

of course the above is why some demographics don't watch much tv. They somewhat care but not enough to serve those demographict.

may I suggest you take up tatting, mandolin, welding, bike riding... there are a long list of other things you can do with your time either on a theme/variation from above or not mentioned. These are all hobbies and you can find some to fill all that time you free o up.