Because they think you’ll be too addicted to their content and offerings to quit

My steamers don’t have any ads.

They’re sure you will, or some will, but the number of customers they lose will be offset by the revenue gained.

Since that’s the only metric they really care about at the end of the day it makes “sense” to them to do it.

People said this about Netflix a while back and I think they’re profits actually went up so that’s why.

Statistics. You’re still there and only complaining. I purged all subscription parasites from my life in 2019.

I live by the abstraction, “you can’t fix stupid in anyone else but yourself.” All you can do is tell others what you did with your one wallet vote and hope that others do the same at some critical mass.

They do it because you’re still there, and you care while they do not. You want to think you’re human. You’re not. You’re a new deck chair on a yacht if you’re lucky. Most likely, you’re no more than a liter or few of diesel.

The economy is in a weird spot where data looks alright (employment and gdp) but the covid economy hit everyone including your friendly neighborhood corporation. Ads are a simple and reliable way to turn up profits in a soft economy and declining global situation and inflation. Since companies have effectively stolen wages for so many years they can’t cope with modest wage spike on their bottom line or really any disruption anywhere in their business they use ads to print money. Maybe as time goes on business will benefit from slowing wage growth and increasing automation we will see ad growth scale back. Regulation would be nice but what are you going to do?

https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2021/03/COVID-inequality-and-automation-acemoglu.htm

https://www.atlantafed.org/blogs/macroblog/2024/06/27/are-real-wages-catching-up

You are a statistic. The question isn’t do you exist but how many of you exist. When there is enough money to be made by serving people like you with fewer ads someone will do it. Until then though you are not worth the money it costs too keep you so good riddance.

of course the above is why some demographics don’t watch much tv. They somewhat care but not enough to serve those demographict.

may I suggest you take up tatting, mandolin, welding, bike riding… there are a long list of other things you can do with your time either on a theme/variation from above or not mentioned. These are all hobbies and you can find some to fill all that time you free o up.

Wait till they drop you as a customer by cancelling your payment tier,then send you countless begging letters over the next month begging you to return. If you wanted my money that badly, why did you cancel me NETFLIX???

Because the “you wouldn’t steal a car” nonsense scares a lot of people off

Because some people want to support the creators of content but digital downloads from iTunes or whatever are more expensive than getting a month of a streaming service

Because there is a level of convenience of having thousands of hours of content at your fingertips without having to store content locally or finding it on a “dodgy” website. Setting up torrents / usenet is more work than giving someone your credit card number

Because a lot of people don’t know where to find content and if they did they don’t know the difference between a 480p avi vs a 2160p HDR DV MKV and get confused with torrents and file formats and how to get them on their TV.

Because - at the moment - the ads aren’t that bad, I got one ad at the start and one episode in the middle of an episode of Gen V - obviously they’ll add more until it’s as bad as cable but they’re not there yet.

You might ditch, but they have enough data that says enough other people aren’t going to.

Just remember whenever you’re annoyed by something and think “why is this a thing? This annoys me so it shouldn’t happen”, there’s thousands of other people who can live with it or just don’t give a shit.

I have zero commercials on my Jellyfin instance.

Because companies want more money and people get used to it.

I think about this a lot. In the 2000s, there would be all these music services that hype themselves up. The Downloadable Music Wars. We all used Napster or whatever pirating tool and it was just easier than paying. In the end, they were all smoke and mirrors and the services died out, while Apple and their iPods won.

In the late 2010s was the PC gaming Wars, Steam was really getting some heat. Not just other e-commerce stores like Epic, but also game streaming services like onLive and PC Game Pass. Again, all these wack ass companies (wtf Origin) and most of them have either folded or are on life support and migrated to Steam.

We’re currently in the Streaming Wars. Probably the second or third version of this war, since the first war killed Blockbuster. I honestly don’t believe many of them will survive past 2030. For sure Netflix and Hulu. Maybe half of them die, and six more will crop up. Who knows.

But what I do know is that whenever these “wars” occur, you see a lot of the shittier companies get worse and worse. And if you never picked a side and did your own thing (ignore them or sail the open seas), you get to look back and laugh at these clowns.

Because netflix tested it and it was worth it for them. The increased revenue from ads more than made up the subscription fees of users lost.

Because they’re also going after piracy as hard as they can