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The era of cheap streaming is officially over
(www.cnn.com)
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this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2023
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This is extremely important for them. Netflix's excellent deal for most of its streaming existence was obviously a thorn in the side of many other businesses. Even if streaming services can get you to pay an exorbitant amount of money on an ad-free tier, advertisers are frothing for the chance to advertise to you regardless. They want you to see their ads so badly. And let's not forget all the big tech companies, Netflix included, were riding high during the free money days of 0% interest loans. Those days are over, and the bill is due. Wall Street wants its money. And we are all the ones who have to pay up. Cheap streaming is officially over.
This is why these companies, including Netflix, have all introduced ad tiers. Not only is it a great way for them to juice their revenue streams, but also every other company wants a permanent residence in your brain, and then some. Given the way things have been going since duo-eras of the COVID pandemic and corporate profit-based inflation, they don't even need to collude on prices. All the execs need to do is look at the business press and say, "Hey, they're getting away with increased prices and password sharing crackdowns. We can do the same thing. The pay pigs keep paying!"
I really cannot understand why advertising is such a huge business. Where does all the money spent on advertising really come from?
Big advertising budgets that are funded from the value alienated from exploited workers and consumers. Information asymmetry in the marketplace means that even if you make a superior product at a lower price, you could still be outcompeted by an expensive inferior product if more people know about that worse product and don't know about your product.
That's for most basic products anyway. Luxury products like bags and clothes are almost all marketing since the cost to create them is so low compared to their sales price. People buy them because of perceptions created by marketing and not any inherent value in the product itself.
As far as I know internet advertising is an economy destroying sunk cost fallacy. No one makes money off of it, but if they stop basically everything collapses catastrophically, so they just keep pouring more money in to it in hopes that someone will find a way to make it profitable before the bill comes due.
Ehhh, not really. If showing 10,000 people an ad costs you $10 and even one person made a purchase off that, you've paid for the ad buy. Internet ad conversions are considered unbelievably excellent if 1% of viewers click on the ad and 1% of those people make a purchase.
Also, if you don't advertise, then your competition that do advertise are going to eat your lunch.
Good too know. I guess i need to do more reading.
Is it really unclear? If you had never heard of a product, you would much less likely purchase it. If Coke stopped advertising today, they'd start a very slow but real loss of market to it's competiton, be it Pepsi or whatever. Note that a LOT of advertising is not for you. It's for the corporate buyer at name your favorite restaurant so that they think that they'll get more consumers in the door because they have Coke products, as opposed to some other brand.
I suppose it's not that unclear if you compare the revenue of all other industries combined to the revenue of the advertising industry. The ratio is pretty large and every type of industry buys ads, so it trickles down from everywhere.
I'll be completely unsurprised when streaming companies start enticing or forcing us into term agreements.
You know it's coming. Why would a streaming company want a consumer buying one month, binging a single show they're interested in, then immediately cancelling the subscription after, when you could guarantee a 6- or 12-month revenue stream for them?
Rents work this way; it wouldn't be a surprise if the same playbook was adopted by these neo-feudalists.
Might fuck around and start invoicing companies for attention time, comprehension time, storage capacity, and of course the 500$ per instance recall fee.