Netflix Ads & the Like
Apr. 22nd, 2022 10:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
owsf2000So according to this Netflix is looking to attract users back to their platform (losing 200k last quarter, and expecting to lose another 2 million this one) by having a cheaper ad-supported version of itself. While also trying to crack down on password sharing.
I suspect one of the reasons they're shedding customers is because they KEEP INCREASING THEIR MONTHLY COST. And for some reason I guess they don't realize that's a big part of what's killing interest in their service. Kinda typical of big media businesses honestly. In their effort to maximize profits by trying to find that 'sweet spot' between price and customers, they completely botched predicting how many customers are going to willingly accept their new price levels - so they're losing a lot more than they thought they would as far as I can tell.
And dropping the monthly cost back down isn't even on the possible plans.
1. Ads: People switched to Netflix and other streaming services to get RID of ads. You aren't likely to see them pay monthly to see them. And we all know even that cheaper tier will keep going up in price. So this is not going to gain sufficient customers.
2. Cracking down on Password Sharing: While I'll agree this is going to be a problem, in today's economy do you honestly think you'll keep the customers that are sharing their accounts if you try to crack down on them? To be honest I can see them just giving it up entirely and picking a cheaper service.
I have a 30 dollar giftcard for Netflix. I got it for Christmas so going to use it obviously. After that however I will not be buying any more giftcards (The only way I pay for Netflix. They ain't getting a credit card number from me.) and the account will become inactive except for the occasional time I may get a card as a gift.
The sole reason for this decision is because they raised the monthly cost yet again. They raised it a few times since I first started using them - at present it's getting close to double what the original price tag was for the same service. So in their greed for more, they've killed the proverbial golden goose and will be left with nothing. (from me at least.) I would never go with a cheaper option that included ads. If they want me to use an ad-infested service, it had better be free. (And even then there's a limit to how many ads I'd tolerate.)
I left cable because of the ads. I won't go back to anything trying to adopt a similar model. As for the account sharing issue, I've never shared my account so that wouldn't affect me either way.
I suspect one of the reasons they're shedding customers is because they KEEP INCREASING THEIR MONTHLY COST. And for some reason I guess they don't realize that's a big part of what's killing interest in their service. Kinda typical of big media businesses honestly. In their effort to maximize profits by trying to find that 'sweet spot' between price and customers, they completely botched predicting how many customers are going to willingly accept their new price levels - so they're losing a lot more than they thought they would as far as I can tell.
And dropping the monthly cost back down isn't even on the possible plans.
1. Ads: People switched to Netflix and other streaming services to get RID of ads. You aren't likely to see them pay monthly to see them. And we all know even that cheaper tier will keep going up in price. So this is not going to gain sufficient customers.
2. Cracking down on Password Sharing: While I'll agree this is going to be a problem, in today's economy do you honestly think you'll keep the customers that are sharing their accounts if you try to crack down on them? To be honest I can see them just giving it up entirely and picking a cheaper service.
I have a 30 dollar giftcard for Netflix. I got it for Christmas so going to use it obviously. After that however I will not be buying any more giftcards (The only way I pay for Netflix. They ain't getting a credit card number from me.) and the account will become inactive except for the occasional time I may get a card as a gift.
The sole reason for this decision is because they raised the monthly cost yet again. They raised it a few times since I first started using them - at present it's getting close to double what the original price tag was for the same service. So in their greed for more, they've killed the proverbial golden goose and will be left with nothing. (from me at least.) I would never go with a cheaper option that included ads. If they want me to use an ad-infested service, it had better be free. (And even then there's a limit to how many ads I'd tolerate.)
I left cable because of the ads. I won't go back to anything trying to adopt a similar model. As for the account sharing issue, I've never shared my account so that wouldn't affect me either way.
no subject
Date: 2022-04-22 05:51 pm (UTC)*eye roll*
Yeah, my sister (not the one with whom I live) had Netflix for years, but she's dropping it when her current subscription runs out, due to not being willing to pay $20 per month for it. My other sister (the one with whom I live) had Netflix years ago, but dropped it due to not being willing to pay whatever arbitrary price increase they'd bumped it up to way back then, which was significantly less than $20 per month.
So, really, it's no wonder they're hemorrhaging customers at this point. And, indeed, including ads on a paid service (even if it's "cheaper," they're still wanting people to pay for advertisements, which is idiotic and has always been idiotic) and trying to monetize password sharing is only going to make matters even worse for them, not better. And I am not going to lose the tiniest bit of sleep over it.
(As for me, I've never subscribed to Netflix, and the only time I ever had cable was for a period of one year, back when I first moved to WA from NC in 2004. After the "promotional price" ended and Comcast tried to jack it up to like $90 per month or whatever it was at the time, I told them to drop the cable and leave me with just basic Internet. Even "just basic Internet" was still way overpriced, of course, but I wasn't going to do without Internet. *shrug + sigh*)
The thing of it all, though, is that any alternative that may come along which claims to do what Netflix used to do, without all the bullshit that Netflix is doing now... if such an alternative were to ever become as popular as Netflix used to be, it will then eventually fail for the exact same reasons that Netflix is currently failing, i.e. greed. And then the cycle will repeat, ad infinitum, ad absurdum, ad nauseam.
Which is funny, because that's how Netflix started: as an alternative to cable, due to all the increasingly bullshit stuff that cable was doing.