TiVo Says People Want Ads (gizmodo.com) 154
If the folks who are responsible for beaming content to your eyeballs are to be believed, streamers are thirsty for more ads of all things. From a report: A survey of 4,526 adults in the U.S. and Canada published by TiVo today claims that a whopping 79% of the survey's respondents reported wanting to use a free and ad-supported service rather than pay for another one. While 81% said they wished Prime Video and Netflix offered free tiers with ads, 80% of respondents reported a difference in the quality of the content on many free, ad-supported platforms -- more specifically, that it's worse. That is, for the most part, true, an exception maybe being Peacock (if you really like NBC). On services like IMDb TV and Vudu, for example, you typically have to comb through a lot of so-so content to find something recent and decent to watch. A bunch of premium services like Hulu and CBS All Access do offer cheaper, ad-supported versions of their products, but those still both cost a few bucks a month for access.
That's not what they said at all (Score:5, Insightful)
They said people want to not pay for content, and are willing to accept ads if they can do that.
Concluding from this that people want ads is probably the dumbest response possible.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yea, and you know what else? People who respond to these types of surveys are usually the ones who can't afford to pay for cable. Because otherwise they'd be watching cable.
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I don't have or watch cable precisely because virtually everything on it has ads.
One more "exactly!". I can afford cable but I refuse to pay for getting 30% ads.
Every TV show that's on Netflix/Hulu/Prime etc is between 41 and 43 minutes. The rest of that time, when broadcast on TV, is obviously nothing but ads. No way I'm going to pay $150+ for that when I can get it ad "free". The only few things that are annoying today are:
- Roku ads on the home screen (I'm paying them $14/month just to catalog, fuck off with your ads)
- Amazon Prime ads disguised as trailers (luckily they made
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It's not about being unable to afford cable, but realizing that spending $100-200 a month is a waste of money when you can get what you want for $10-20 instead. Or that you realize that you don't actually like cable, or even television anymore, and all that money can be spent on something you like. It is not our job as consumers to provide charity to corporations, if companies don't give value for the money then stop sending them money.
Re:That's not what they said at all (Score:4, Insightful)
Better research: How do the brains of commoners react to the word "Free!"
They're twisting the portrayal out of incompetence. ...is what I want to believe, rather than they're deliberately applying bullshit spin.
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Better research: How do the brains of commoners react to the word "Free!"
They're twisting the portrayal out of incompetence. ...is what I want to believe, rather than they're deliberately applying bullshit spin.
Did TiVo say "people want ads" or did the author come up with a click bait headline?
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"TiVo today claims that a whopping 79% of the survey’s respondents reported wanting to use a free and ad-supported service rather than pay for another one."
RTF
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OK fine, the options given are: "Free (with ads)" OR "Paid (no ads)" .
What Falos is pointing out:
They're changing two variables together with no respect to their inverse. ... and a fourth option: "Paid (with ads)"
What about a third option: "Free (no ads)"
Then we'll see just how much people "want ads".
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Or "not watching your crap and reading a book instead."
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No, I thought not!
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The key point is that the cost was not the same Ad-supported meant lower cost. Most people are willing to accept ads if it lowers the cost. Some, like me, also insist that the ads also not be malware, ubiquitous, insulting to our intelligence, sucking up all our internet bandwidth and cpu, and not be tracking us. And repeated a second time since it's vital, not be malware.
Now you get horribly messed up things, like the youtube video where an ad pops up every 5 minutes and is unskippable, or the youtube
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Exactly this. Additionally, some of the services already put ads in the non-free tiers, which makes me ask why I'm paying money for it.
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The answer is above: TV execs think you want those ads.
(and they have the data to prove it!)
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Yeah... Hulu, I'm looking at you.
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Agreed. I tried the free 1 month trial of YouTube premium (without ads). The result is I enjoy YouTube a lot more now. I'm actually thinking of continuing the premium service. If I add up all the minutes I spent watching ads during a day, I'm pretty sure I could justify buying back that time for $20/month.
Ex: 50 videos/day with 5 seconds of ad per video (it's probably more). That adds up to 2 hours of my time per month watching ads. I'll spend $20 to buy that 2 hours, thank you.
Re: That's not what they said at all (Score:4, Informative)
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Agreed. I tried the free 1 month trial of YouTube premium (without ads). The result is I enjoy YouTube a lot more now. I'm actually thinking of continuing the premium service
Really? I never thought of that way. I might need to think it over a little better. As a rule I really don't mind ads on Youtube when they are on the Nividia Shield. They tend to be short and actually to the point, unlike broadcast TV.
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We generated a new gmail account and hooked it up with youtube premium just for our TV. It is really, really nice not seeing ads on youtube. We often put on one of those 1-3 hour "Videos" that just has music with calming drone footage of picturesque european mountan cities, or whatever, in the background. There is a whole universe of long-format stuff designed to put on the TV and just let it play in the background. With ads, this gets broken up every 5-15 minutes with 30s - 3m of ads. The paid version of y
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I would dearly like to watch YouTube without ads, but $20/month is WAY too high for the use I get from YouTube, and I don't think I'd increase my watching that much more...
At $10 I'd probably go for it though.
50 videos/day with 5 seconds of ad per video (it's probably more). That adds up to 2 hours of my time per month watching ads.
I have my phone with me and just switch to checking messages or doing some quick actions in apps while the ads are on, so no time wasted for me (or not much), they just interrup
WHy not make everything ad supported. (Score:5, Interesting)
in the supermarket Want these bananas? Just watch this ad. eventually this ratchets up to the free stay in a condo if you will just go to a seminar of buying condos. (Never do that by the way--- it's a tempting awful mistake.)
Then why not move onto say illegal drugs. loose joints in return for watching this ad.https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/21/01/27/1513201/tivo-says-people-want-ads#
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free stay in a condo if you will just go to a seminar of buying condos. (Never do that by the way--- it's a tempting awful mistake.)
What's wrong with it? Never done it, just wondering.
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free stay in a condo if you will just go to a seminar of buying condos. (Never do that by the way--- it's a tempting awful mistake.)
I did that once for time shares. And it was an eye opener.
Because I wanted to get it out of the way, I got to the seminar early. But the people at the front door mistook me for a salesperson running late and I was ushered into the morning pre-sales meeting with all the other salespeople. The head sales guy saw me come in late, asked me for my name and then instantly came up with a BS backstory of how I wanted a better future for my wife and kids (of which I had neither) that he used to inspire the rest
people gladly accept cancer later (Score:3)
in return for a nicotine buzz now. What people say they want isn't always a good idea.
Clickbait (Score:2)
Lede is designed to provoke comments... and it got me too!
They want to pay - with their time, not money. (Score:2)
Additional point - these people prefer to pay with their time (watching ads) rather then money.
Re:That's not what they said at all (Score:5, Funny)
It isn't dumb, it's spin.
TiVo: Do you prefer to be dismembered with a dull machete or anally raped?
Customers: Uh... Dismemberment sounds kind of fatal, we'd rather not.
TiVo: Our customers want to be anally raped!
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This is the best short answer. Correct. Nobody WANTS or LIKES ads. Some people are just willing to put up with them (and more and more people are not - advertisement is, fortunately in this case, a good example of the tragedy of the commons).
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Concluding from this that people want ads is probably the dumbest response possible.
Is it? I mean from a logical point of view, yes. But the majority of replies here are about the issue you brought up, and a lot of the comments on the article are too. My guess is that very inaccurate headline generated a hell of a lot more clicks than the more accurate versions would.
Welcome to journalism 2021, there's coffee over there and plenty of click bait and hyperbole for everyone so feel free to fill up!
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I think the logical thing is to make a channel that is just ads, and charge people extra for that. You could probably charge a lot, since it's what people like. In fact, get rid of the shows altogether.
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A streaming service consisting of informercial channels could still be free as long as you bought a minimum amount of product.
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What he said. +1 insightful.
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Also guess what, TiVo? They either skip through the ads, or just don't pay attention to them, go get a snack or drink, then come back when the ads are over, just like people have been doing with OTA TV for decades.
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Yes, wrong assumption to make. Probably some advertising agencies are exuberant that people are willing to watch their ads rather than being water boarded.
But actually, I worked with someone who actualy did like ads He was looking some stuff up online and all these videos are automatically playing and the content he wanted was just a tiny part of the screen. I mentioned the possibility of using ad-block so as to not waste all his time and bandwidth and he got angry at that. Claimed that he liked ads and
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They said people want to not pay for content, and are willing to accept ads if they can do that.
Concluding from this that people want ads is probably the dumbest response possible.
Actually, I do want ads. HONEST ads for the things I actually want to buy. But not just ads from one side. I'd like to see several choices to consider before making my decision.
My pie-in-the-sky solution approach? First of all, my privacy should be protected and my personal information should never flow to the advertising intermediaries. Only if I decide to make a purchase should there be an exchange of appropriate billing information with the actual provider of the good or service I am buying.
Second, the t
No Read it again. (Score:5, Insightful)
They want more free ad supported streaming rather than having to pay for yet another streaming service. They want FREE and are willing to watch ads to get that. They DO NOT WANT ads. They want FREE.
Re:No Read it again. (Score:5, Interesting)
I want free TV, with ads. That I can record. And skip the ads.
Re:No Read it again. (Score:5, Informative)
Broadcast TV is really nice. Free, high image quality, unencrypted and, with the right equipment, easy to record, watch later and skip the ads.
How times change (Score:3)
Wasn't there a company called TiVo which offered a product to do just that?
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Duh! Of course, what they want is free streaming services which people can use their ad-stripping on, so that people will continue to buy their product. They probably haven't done a 180 and switched to selling advertising.
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The trouble is they can't be bothered to provide a proper channel lineup for any given market... instead polluting the channel list with a bunch of identically named channels that don't actually work (probably adjacent markets). Then they further can't be bothered to provide an auto-detect function that could automatically remove non-functioning channels. Then they EVEN FURTHER could not be bothered to make it easy to edit said channel lineup to remove non-broadcasting channels by putting a simple button
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20-ish year history with TiVo here. Modded the early ones for more drive space, generally loved it, but we're done after this set of HW breaks. The end result for me was realizing how terrible "cloud dvrs" are.
We could have TB of space on a local device, but God forbid we buffer more than 25 seconds on a streaming app. 30 second skip isn't fine enough for some things (free throws in basketball, between football plays). You NEED a visual clue when fast forwarding, and the network simply cannot keep up wit
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They want more free ad supported streaming rather than having to pay for yet another streaming service. They want FREE and are willing to watch ads to get that. They DO NOT WANT ads. They want FREE.
Which isn't possible of course. The cost of adverts is paid when they go shopping.
In the UK there's always a group campaigning for the license fee to be scrapped because it is "unfair" to people who watch TV and listen to the radio but not the BBC (of which there are maybe several dozen), but they apparently are happy for everyone in the country to pay for TV advertising on some more channels even if they don't own a TV.
People want FREE. They can't have it.
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And too many people are too dumb to understand that whether they pay in money or some other way, it's never free.
Ads are manipulation (Score:5, Insightful)
Advertisements are just psychological manipulation. I don't want any ads in my life ever. Not on billboards. Not in comics. Not online.
To quote Bill Hicks: if you're in advertising, kill yourself.
Re:Ads are manipulation (Score:5, Funny)
Advertisements are just psychological manipulation.
If you want that, just get married.
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They have ads for that too.
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What? You think he did his own booking and scheduling?
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It's not so much advertising as a guide or "manual" for using your theater. Without that information there's no way for people to know when to use your product/services other than off-hand chance of being there.
If you put additional content in there, like the sale on hammers at the hardware store next door, that would be advertising.
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Which is what adverts do, give you said info. You do not know if Sears has XX brand 75" TV if they don't advertise it. Other than the off-hand chance of being in their store.
Him sending out emails is advertising.
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But how can it be an advertisement if it's not chock full of scripts and trackers and malware?
I don't mind ads if they're for one's own products, or for products of interest to customers that are carefully curated. The problem with modern internet ads is that they're utterly and completely random. Joe Schmo wants to help offset his ISP costs for his online dating advice site, so he links up a script to a third party advertiser and waits to collect the money; meanwhile the cusotmers are asking "why the hel
Headline written by an idiot. (Score:5, Insightful)
The primary reason for a TiVo is to skip ads (Score:5, Interesting)
Less of my TV watching is OTA these days, I'm currently subscribing to Netflix, Amazon, Disney, Sling and HBO Max. Out of those, only Sling subjects me to commercials when I record (never watch live) "cable" station content or watch their "collected" episodes.
The TiVo has a hidden, but well-documented feature to entirely skip commercials, which is apparently based on crowdsourcing -- the skip points aren't set until some time after the show finishes (encouraging time-shifting). Even then, occasionally a show won't have commercial skipping turned on (Colbert in particular seems to suffer from this).
Sling's commercials can be skipped in 30-second increments depending on the network. "Collected" eps are less likely to permit skipping.
Frankly, if the commercials are of high quality (movie trailers, for instance) I'll watch them. But if I never have to see Kars 4 Kids again, I'd probably be willing to pay a pretty penny.
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It's the network that you are watching that is showing you commercials.
That's how TV works. Moron.
Be careful what you wish for... (Score:2)
Ladies and gentlemen, you wanted to unbundle, and you got your wish.
Welcome to the post-bundling world, where you have to pay for everything individually, and it costs much much more.
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Bingo.
I'm lucky to be in Fios territory... have a fair price for internet/TV with zero drama. Tivo, search, done. No time for BS.
Streaming service soup sucks. "Which service carries that show?" "Oh, that's on NBC Peacock Discovery Disney whateverthehell - which is an additional $7.99/month, or $12.99 with only 3 ads per show, $14.99 if you want to watch on your phone *and* TV, plus another $3 for 4K" - screw that.
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Ladies and gentlemen, you wanted to unbundle, and you got your wish.
Welcome to the post-bundling world, where you have to pay for everything individually, and it costs much much more.
That right there. Every time ball licking free market fucks talk about "value" and "unbundling" what they really mean is "we want to see how much will you pay for what use to be included".
Americans are stupid and can't / won't see the big picture. Instead we concentrate on the fragments and pieces in front of us now. The ball game was over once content owners figured out people would pay for individual services. For a brief moment in time we had a chance to pick a path where content was readily availabl
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where you have to pay for everything individually
But I didn't want everything. I usually want so few parts of the bundle that the a-la-cart model usually ends up being cheaper.
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You want to pick a fight? You can do so with my spell checker.
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Streaming services are a pay even more for content that you were already getting but claim you're cutting the cord.
Streaming morons have not figured out the reason your cable bill was high was the price of the content. Which hit people smack in the face on CBS on demand when they found out they couldn't watch content over, wait for
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Yes and no. I have Prime, Netflix, and Spotify, and I am done paying for other things. I run a pihole, and explain to my wife why she cannot click on Google ads anymore and how to get around it without giving money to Google. Subscription fatigue is real, and companies should be aware of it. The amount of energy wasted on advertising is also something companies need to better understand— real customer service and searchable, navigable websites do much more to drive sales while building customer alle
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A survey (Score:2)
What was the questions asked?
Just by reordering questions in a survey gives different results.
Amazing (Score:2)
People want TV the way it was before cable.
buy a TV, watch shows, see adds. Only cost was for the TV.
Ever since cable came in to play with "better" signal its pay for TV, pay for cable, then pay for special shows.
Re:Amazing (Score:5, Informative)
They don't miss shitty stovepiped OTA content tho. (Score:2)
OTA TV was always the lamest shit possible so as not to offend advertisers or the audience. It was never good in the US.
Increases inequality (Score:2)
No ads, but no subscriptions either! (Score:5, Insightful)
Tweetbot, an iOS Twitter client, just switched to a subscription model. It's $6/year. There are a lot of people up in arms over this. They seem to hate the subscription model on principle, even though Tweetbot has to pay monthly fees to Twitter to use the API at the volumes they do.
By paying $6/year—and that's not a typo, six dollars per year—you don't have to see any ads from the official Twitter client, and nobody's messing with your timeline algorithmically. That sounds like a pretty good cost benefit to me.
I've seen some people say they'd rather pay $18 up front than $6/year for 3 years, obviously unaware that nobody will pay more than a couple bucks for an app anymore. They won't even consider it; they'll just scroll right past.
So people seem to hate ads BUT they hate subscriptions even more, so I'm not sure how software devs are supposed to get paid, other than charging for every release of a new app, which Apple forces them to be a NEW app. Oh, and the old app isn't allowed to stay on the store, so if you release v2 of your app and you want to charge for it, it has to be a completely new app and you have to remove v1.
So here's the news: people don't want to pay for anything, and they'll put up with a lot of garbage so they don't have to take a couple bucks out of their pocket. They think software and content should be free, updates provided immediately and with a smile, and woe betide you if you try anything that might keep your company solvent.
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And that's exactly the damage that ads have done. Expectations are now "I want everything to be free", and nobody (en masse) had been paying attention to the strings attached (ads, personal data) until recently.
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App subscriptions generally have a poor value proposition. It blows my mind that my SIP client has a $1/month subscription fee (it adds push notification to multiple devices for the price, but that is worth more like $3/year to me).
I get it... things aren’t free. One time fees (along with one-time charitable donations) are much more appealing to some of us. Be clear in what you are offering for the money.
never-ending fees (Score:2)
People don't want to have to monitor their subscriptions to cancel when they are no longer interested in the service. The secondary revenue opportunity in any subscription service is people paying for a service they are no longer using. A software company who has chained up thousands of subscribers can fire the developers and sell the
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If you're so wealthy that scrolling through the transactions in your bank account / credit card occasionally takes significant time, does it really matter that you're losing a few bucks? I can't understand the mindset of someone who simultaneously doesn't pay attention to their spending and is worried about accidentally spending on something they don't need anymore.
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They don't want to pay != they want ads (Score:4, Informative)
Other than the Superbowl Halftime, People don't really like or want Ads. However most of them are willing to deal with them, if they don't have to pay, or pay as much.
Providing digital content to more than a thousand users, takes money a lot of money. However many of these places give us a lot of free (In terms of cost from our bank accounts) content, that we actually have a lot of value to. Think how often do you Google information and get the answer right away.
There are a lot of services that we get for free, that offer a lot of value that we probably wouldn't pay for otherwise, mainly because money it tight, and Ads while annoying are usually easy to bypass or ignore.
Give me a call (Score:2)
Instead of blasting some misleading information about my credit card or home mortgage, ask me if I like ads. Or do you already know the damn answer?
I grew up in the 50s and 60s (Score:2)
There was no avoiding ads. The best I could do is ignore them. I never bought anything because of an ad
When I got my first DVR, I discovered ad-skipping. It was great
Now, I never watch TV with ads, and if I visit a place with a TV that is showing ad-based programming, I wonder in amazement how anybody puts up with it
To me, ads are a stupid waste of my time and the advertisers' money
If targeted advertising actually worked, and showed me informative ads for products I was in the market for, I would be happy
Un
false alternatives (Score:2)
It's an obviously paid-for study that offers to fake alternatives.
I could also make a study that people support piracy by asking if they'd rather watch a movie for free or pay for it.
The problem with most "pay services" isn't the pay - it's the subscription model. I've bought music and movies off the iTunes store, because it's a) convenient, b) prices are fair and c) I don't get into some mess of subscription which then I forget to cancel and I'm stuck with it for years.
Would I rather watch something with a
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Check out Pluto TV. Ads but it is free. Lots of content. This is how TV works.
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Check out Pluto TV
The fact that I've never heard about it before now might be an indicator as to its success.
I maintain my point. People do not WANT ads. They put up with them if that's how it works. And the success of iTunes proves that people ARE willing to pay for content.
If you are watching TV every day, then paying for it is probably ok. If you watch sometimes, it's probably a bad deal. Most people watch sometimes. That's why for the TV company the subscription model is better. But for most people it's not. So they're r
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Aren't they the only real alternatives, though?
That's the right question. Because markets get disrupted and new highly successful companies started by people who can come up with a new alternative that others didn't see.
What about me? (Score:2)
Tivo didn't ask me if I wanted ads or not, to which I would have told them to take these ads and shove'em. Ads are the scourge of the earth and a waste of everybody's time.
Nope (Score:2)
if tivo (Score:2)
if tivo says it enough times, someone might actually believe it.
Commercial Television is unwatchable (Score:2)
TIme for an Ad Streaming Service (Score:2)
I guess this means that it is time for an Ad streaming service. For $4.99/month you can watch ads 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. These idiots can subscribe to that and get all the advertizing that they want.
I'd say people want better quality content... (Score:2)
Ironic (Score:2)
The hell they do (Score:2)
More Dick Pics please (Score:2)
Don't turn evil on me, TiVo.. (Score:2)
:thinking-face: - pushed back to piracy? (Score:2)
This is all just a bit ... same old same old, really, isn't it?
As many commenters have rightly said, it's fuck all to do with ads and everything to do with free.
Well, hell, if you want free and NO ads, just download the damn show as a torrent and watch it when you want.
But I thought we'd started going beyond that? I thought streaming services were there to make this less of an option?
I thought that it would be cool to spend a few bucks a month, support those who spend their time making entertainment, withou