Netflix CFO has no plans for advertising but 'never say never' | Hacker News Reader

Netflix CFO has no plans for advertising but 'never say never'

reuters.com

34 pointssamizdis47 comments

Is this a submarine PR to test the waters?

If they put ads on netflix, what's the point of not pirating the torrent even if I pay netflix because I hate ads? Maybe they can try it for netflix originals and in exchange of free instead of paid subscription, would be a nice experiment to try and compete with TV that way going free/ads

It’s an advertisement.

I already torrent some Netflix content for fear of them removing it after some set date arbitrarily (e.g. Gloria, Umbrella Academy)

Netflix as far as I'm concerned, is just the newest member of "Big Content" with essentially the same behaviors except they are 'streaming first'...beyond that, no different.

Like Google, they will eventually forget everything that made them appealing in the first place and be trash, with the commensurate backlash to go with it.

Those dates are almost always not arbitrary. They're usually due to licensing and distribution agreements. Not trying to dissuade your from torrenting, but it's disingenuous to call those dates arbitrary. They're the simple reality of being in the content business, even originals aren't always fully vertically integrated, but that's certain the direction the industry is moving.

Is there transparency of these dates to the Netflix clients? If not, it is from that perspective pretty arbitrary.

I'm not being disingenuous, and "the reality of the content business" is mostly arbitrary in many ways (I worked in anti-piracy for years in an irony to trump all ironies, and the industry is on a good day, a bad sub-plot from an episode of Entourage).

Those licensing and distribution agreements are often opaque to the public, and the industry has helped to create a consumer fickleness that perpetuates the bad habits all around.

Maybe they want to offer free service, but monetized by ads?

Or a low-cost option with ads. Hulu and others already do this, and Disney+ just announced that it would be trying a similar model.

I used to pay for Netflix and still torrent its content due to the low quality of video, sometimes mysterious network problems (only with Netflix), sometimes not being able to watch a movie without dubbing (???). Generally, no matter how much magic there is on Netflix's backend that I read about, the frontend seems to be a pile of goo.

But over the years, movies kept disappearing from Netflix and at this point anything I may want to watch is typically not available on Netflix, so I cancelled my subscription. I'm probably going to switch to Amazon Prime, since it appears to have the best offer in terms of content.

"it's not something in our plan right now." Which means it's coming.

Given the large amount of money Netflix has had to borrow to grow their library they will need to hike their monthly fees . Given this, they will also have to do something about the growing discontent with high fees. Which means, they will start to do what all other services are doing. They will split the service into two tiers, advertising vs no advertising. I have no doubt they are thinking about it and are planning on how to do it. They will frame the advertising tier as a way to help their subscribers. It will probably happen with the next price hike.

They should just start talking about it so people get used to the idea. Business is business. If you can't pay your bills then you can't continue to exist. Hiking fees are just part of what you need to do as an on going business.

If Netflix gives me the choice of either watching ads or paying an extra $5/month, I'll pay the extra $5/month.

If they pull the garbage that Hulu does where they advertise in big letters "NO ADS!" and then in the fine print say "Some content may still have ads", then I will cancel that shit and return to pirating.

If Netflix presents me with that choice, I'm just cancelling. Their no ad stance was their key market differentiator that made me want to support them. If they walk that back, they are just another streaming service.

Maybe I'll sign up for a month a year to catch up on exclusives, but I won't just let the subscription roll to support them anymore.

I'm with you. Watching ads is not worth it. Life is too short. Not only does it waste your time but it entices you to buy crap you don't need. I rather pay.

I was enraged, after paying for both peacock premium AND the no ads add-on, that a movie I watched suddenly started showing ads. With no warning. And it was a horror movie. One hell of a jump scare, I tell ya.

I can’t believe this is actually legal. You show three two minute ads interspersed throughout a movie, after I specifically paid to not get ads?

> I can’t believe this is actually legal. You show three two minute ads interspersed throughout a movie, after I specifically paid to not get ads?

Actually, that's interesting; is it? That sounds like, if you'll pardon the not-pun, False Advertising, and I would be interested in watching a lawyer tell a judge that fine print directly contradicting the big print isn't fraud.

This. I will never pay for ads.

> If they pull the garbage that Hulu does where they advertise in big letters "NO ADS!" and then in the fine print say "Some content may still have ads", then I will cancel that shit and return to pirating.

I didn't believe you.... and then I found Hulu's FAQ page explaining how No Ads still means ads

https://help.hulu.com/s/article/ads-no-commercials

I've stuck with Netflix for a long time, even through months where I never streamed with them, to support their zero-ad stance.

Autoplaying trailers peeved me, but I stuck with them anyways.

The day I have to watch an ad to view something in their library will be the day I cancel and cease all good will I feel for them.

This seems like such a negligent short-term-profit-maximizing error to even discuss publicly.

The day this happens is the day I unsubscribe and resume aggressive piracy out of spite.

Like hell if I am going to pay to be fucking served advertising.

it likely won't affect existing plans. It would likely be a different plan you can choose to switch to if you want to pay less for netflix.

Netflix already has tons of ads. They heavily use product placement on some shows. Their subtlety makes them worse than explicit ads IMO.

There's a lot wrong with Netflix's Single All the Way but in one shot there's a 10 second close up of someone using a phone to search for a Holiday Inn Express which is shown having 4.6 stars. At the end of this shot they receive a job hired notification from Taskrabbit and cancel their search. Product placement is driving plot lines now.

A Netflix Christmas movie has a many MINUTES long advertisement with Santa clause driving a car and commenting on specific features of the car.

The position that Netflix does not already have egregious ad breaks is laughable.

"We don't have plans, but never say never" could apply to quite literally any question regarding company direction for any company on the face of the earth. This is just a fluff piece to get people talking.

Netflix loves to say that they don’t do paid product placement and weasel out by doing product placement paid for by joint promotions (stranger things) or paid to “non-Netflix”-Netflix production (or what the hell the call it, when they don’t have exclusive rights to their Netflix exclusives) (any Korean show)

I think this is about product placement. And I just don’t understand why Netflix hasn’t begun doing dynamic product placement. It’s the weaseling out way of showing advertisements.

What do they call it when every alcoholic beverage in Ozark is produced by AB-Inbev and has a prominently-featured label?

They say, it’s either a collab, where they share promotion and no money changes hand, so it’s “not paid product placement” or it’s not produced by Netflix (even though it has the big N animation and shows up when browsing for Netflix shows), so it’s “not Netflix who are doing the product placement.”

It’s all weasel words. Netflix is obviously big on product placement. I don’t like it, but from a business point of view I think it’s their best option, in order to keep prices down, while still avoiding showing traditional sponsored segments.

That doesn't sound like a CFO decision.

My thoughts exactly, that's not what a CFO does. They'll add the numbers up at the end of the quarter, but they don't make the decisions on how money is spent or earned.

Oof, this is a very antiquated idea of a CFO's involvement. I've worked for a few and more often than not, they're on the front line with every decision.

That's fair, but every one I've worked with has been closer to an accountant than a decision maker. They will certainly have reccomendations, but they generally don't steer the way a product is offered or monitized.

And a lot tend to make decisions for IT departments too from my experience.

And watch how that works out:)

I hope the CEO slaps CFO's hand for damaging the brand with this reckless statement.

I'm going back to channel bittorrent the nanosecond they do that.

> "It's hard for us to ignore that others are doing it, but for now it doesn't make sense for us"

And that's completely reasonable.

Ads negatively affect how viewers reflect on their watch experience, and as long as you have potential customers out there who've never tried Netflix before, you want to make sure they get the best experience.

Netflix is smart to put off the day as long as possible, but it's definitely a matter of time. I have to imagine the pull of ads is huge.

Why not! Hulu has been pretty good so far with having 2 plans:

- 1 cheap, with ads

- 1 more premium, no ads

It lets everyone vote with their wallet.

Except the "No ads" claim on Premium is bullshit false advertising, because some content still has ads before and after.

I vote for my wallet by not paying for Hulu.

Iirc, it's only a handful of shows and it's due to contractual agreements that pre-date the ad-free plan.

Oh, well, if they have a contract that says they have to lie I guess that's okay then. /s

But seriously, that's their problem, not mine; if they can't actually deliver zero ads then they can call it the "almost no ads" plan or the "no new ads" plan or whatever they want that isn't a lie.

Then Hulu should have renegotiated the contracts rather than resort to lying in their marketing.

If they put ads on Netflix I would quit.

My Pi-hole says never.

Your Pi-hole only does DNS blocking. They can just send it alongside the video like YouTube (which can be bypassed but in a different way).

Your pi-hole doesn't block ads like this

https://m.imgur.com/IZwvACb

That’s clearly not what’s being discussed.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com