Should there be more free ad-supported streaming services?

[themistermanguy]

Currently, the most popular streaming networks right now are Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Video. These require a subscription fee to access. While this allows for the perks of unlimited content commercial free, not everybody has the money to pay for 7 services at once, on top of their monthly internet bill if this becomes the norm. For this reason, do you feel there should be more free streaming networks paid for by ads, or at least, should the big 3 offer free ad-supported alternatives to their paid services?

There are a few free stream networks at the moment such as Crackle, and Hulu used to be free until they switched to a subscription only model (though their cheapest option still has ads). But I think there should be more alternatives in this field. As repetitive as online video ads can be, I think people will be willing to sit through them if it can save them some money. Plus, it can give companies more places to advertise, since these opportunities appear to be shrinking as linear television looses more and more relevancy, especially among younger viewers.

 

[Kyrian007]

Its a good idea, but there's a few problems with it. #1 is Netflix. It became so big and so successful so fast, it kind of became the benchmark. Anyone wanting a "piece of that" is building off of it as a model. Meaning no commercials, subscription based.

And that fits in to #2 as well. Copyrights. Crackle gets away with it because it is Sony, and they own lots of copyrights. But notice not all Sony produced or owned shows and movies are on the platform. Mostly that has to do with distribution and content.

A real life example, JJ Abrams' Bad Robot made a show for Fox called "Fringe." An episode in the first season contained a sequence with a song from a Lady Gaga album. Bad Robot and Fox cut a deal with Netflix for the rights to stream the show. But Lady Gaga worked with 3 or 4 producers and a couple of different record labels on the album that song appeared in. The labels wanted money from Netflix or Bad Robot... or preferably both. In the end Bad Robot ended up redubbing the audio of the episode to remove the contested song. But they had the benefit of being able to do that because the show was still in production.

Its why Netflix pushes original programming so hard, its a lot less of a legal hassle. Same with the foreign content. Foreign studios have a tendency to take whatever deal a streaming service offers if it gets their programming in front of whole new audiences. The future might have a few more aggregate services like VRV, where a few smaller streaming services aggregate their content onto one platform that offers a discount rate if you pay for them all... but I'm sure copyright is a bear of a problem for anyone wanting to start something like that.

There is tons of ad based free content channels. Tubi, Crackle, Roku has their own now, Shout Factory is a favorite of mine because they have Rhino Home Video content meaning they show lots of MST3K. But the free ad based channels, have and will continue to have problems with content quality. They won't be able to match up with the Netflixes and Amazon Primes.

Weirdly enough, smartphones really hurt ad based models too. Marketing research is finding that commercials don't have as much impact now that you can fire up angry birds or check facebook while waiting for a commercial break to be over.

 

[themistermanguy]

Its a good idea, but there's a few problems with it. #1 is Netflix. It became so big and so successful so fast, it kind of became the benchmark. Anyone wanting a "piece of that" is building off of it as a model. Meaning no commercials, subscription based.

Which is what ultimately will cause the market to implode. With everyone being expected to pony up a lot of money for each individual service, eventually they'll just stick with the services they're used to, and all the others will fall into the abyss. That's why its important for companies to start doing free services, or at least offer free versions. The market has shown at this point that it can only handle a few premium subscription services at a time, and if it comes to a point where we need to spend at least $100 on streaming services to get what we want, we'll just end up with the same problem as Cable TV, except now it'd be worse since you'd have to pay for each network individually, even the ones you don't really want, but have that one show you really want to see.

And that fits in to #2 as well. Copyrights. Crackle gets away with it because it is Sony, and they own lots of copyrights. But notice not all Sony produced or owned shows and movies are on the platform. Mostly that has to do with distribution and content.

A real life example, JJ Abrams' Bad Robot made a show for Fox called "Fringe." An episode in the first season contained a sequence with a song from a Lady Gaga album. Bad Robot and Fox cut a deal with Netflix for the rights to stream the show. But Lady Gaga worked with 3 or 4 producers and a couple of different record labels on the album that song appeared in. The labels wanted money from Netflix or Bad Robot... or preferably both. In the end Bad Robot ended up redubbing the audio of the episode to remove the contested song. But they had the benefit of being able to do that because the show was still in production.

Its why Netflix pushes original programming so hard, its a lot less of a legal hassle. Same with the foreign content. Foreign studios have a tendency to take whatever deal a streaming service offers if it gets their programming in front of whole new audiences. The future might have a few more aggregate services like VRV, where a few smaller streaming services aggregate their content onto one platform that offers a discount rate if you pay for them all... but I'm sure copyright is a bear of a problem for anyone wanting to start something like that.

I could see how that might be a problem as well. It's also important for any free service to produce its own content too. Crackle does it as well as it can for a free service, and traditional television has done it for years.

There is tons of ad based free content channels. Tubi, Crackle, Roku has their own now, Shout Factory is a favorite of mine because they have Rhino Home Video content meaning they show lots of MST3K. But the free ad based channels, have and will continue to have problems with content quality. They won't be able to match up with the Netflixes and Amazon Primes.

I do think that eventually, Free ad-based services can co-exist with the subscription based ones. As I mentioned, eventually people are just going to stick with the one or two subscription services they like.

Weirdly enough, smartphones really hurt ad based models too. Marketing research is finding that commercials don't have as much impact now that you can fire up angry birds or check facebook while waiting for a commercial break to be over.

It'd be harder to do if you're actually watching on a smartphone, since videos don't normally play in the background. Honestly, I think shorter commercial breaks and the ability to skip ads would go a long way to improve the experience. People will only pay attention to what will personally interest them, and skip the ones that don't. Many people skip ads they don't care about when on YouTube, but will let the ones that pique their interest roll, at least I do. I don't think people don't want commercials anymore, as its always good to see something you didn't know you wanted. I just think the traditional commercial block model on cable is outdated for most people.

 

[EvilRoy]

Its kind of a tough sell, considering the competition. Webseries tried to be a thing for a little while, starting on websites and eventually migrating to youtube based serial shows, but they struggled like hell for a long time due to both limited interest and the low take of ad based income. Your average youtube Lper makes fuck all from ads, with more popular hosts making decent scratch by producing daily videos with hundreds of thousands of views at minimum. Plenty of webseries had decent ratings (~10 mil per episode), but thats a once a week episode with significant production costs relative to a couple people making commentary over a game.

I think as internet based entertainment moves more and more into the common mindset, and people start to ditch their cable package in greater numbers ad value, and thus revenue, may increase enough to the stage where streaming full production shows can make a decent return. But as of right now, the danger of piracy, blockers, international copyright issues (canada netflix vs us netflix) and even just the cost of a decent enough internet service to stream full HD 1080 are all pretty huge hurtles to funding a fully produced serialized show from internet ads alone.

 

[bluegate]

The amount of ads needed to make such a system lucrative would put people off from using said system. People would also find all sorts of ways to circumvent the ads just to be able to watch without the hassle of having ads.