Netflix will show generative AI ads midway through streams in 2026
Netflix is trying to grow ad revenue quickly.
arstechnica.com
We live in a capitalist dystopia
- Thread starter NovaSaber
- Start date
arstechnica.com
Blockbuster never shoved midroll ads into my movies.
You'll note: blockbuster wasn't just dead; it was extinct, before they added midrolls to streams. They simply had to be better than "walking into a store and making a decision", until they could capitalism all over it and ruin it.
The high seas are about to get a lot more traffic.
It's the only reasonable thing to do. They keep yanking the football.
Streaming was never going to be sustainable long term. Giving people all the programming they can watch for a fraction of what they used to pay for cable, plus movies they used to have to rent or buy, with no commercials? It could only have ever been a rug-pull scheme.
I mean... You could have said the same thing about cable back when: it didn't have commercials either at first. The idea was that you were already paying for it, so ads were unnecessary.
Maybe any form of large scale content distribution is just untenable.
Or the unending drumbeat of capitalism exists to suck the life and joy from everything.
Maybe any form of large scale content distribution is just untenable.
Or the unending drumbeat of capitalism exists to suck the life and joy from everything.
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I remember first getting Netflix back in 2013 or 2014. Around the time when the House of Cards remake with (“cancelled actor”) was released. Used my Wii U to stream it, as I had a non-smart TV back then. It was amazing. No adverts, just like the BBC! But so much content, and it was 1080p, which still isn't a given on broadcast TV. No slop own-brand Netflix movies back then either. And it was dirt-cheap, and you could password share across households. It sort of was too good to be true, really. But, I also point but finger at all that money wasted on ‘premium’ series and films, most of which are awful. I realise they needed original content, but making so much of it coupled with minimal quality control, nah. That’s messed it all up.
I give it 18 months at most before Netflix or a major rival announces they are going to “offer” fully AI-generated films and series.
I give it 18 months at most before Netflix or a major rival announces they are going to “offer” fully AI-generated films and series.
So, little known fact in the history of US antitrust policy: There was a ruling in 1943 called the Paramount Decree that basically made it illegal for any company to own both a movie production company and a theater chain. The big movie studios were employing a vertical-integration model where if you wanted to see a Paramount film, you had to go to one of their theaters; if you wanted to see an MGM film, you had to go to one of their theaters, etc. and independent films basically had nowhere to be exhibited because all the theaters would only book films made by their parent companies. This put an end to that. Anyway, in 2018 it was decided that the DOJ would stop enforcing the policy, claiming that the danger of the old studio system popping back into existence was basically nil.
And yet, is that not exactly what the streaming model is doing? Every major distributor owns their own service, makes their content exclusive to that service, and refuses to carry any third party content on their service unless there's an exclusivity deal.
Anyway, let's add "revive the Paramount Doctrine and apply it to streaming services" to my list of hypothetical campaign pledges.
And yet, is that not exactly what the streaming model is doing? Every major distributor owns their own service, makes their content exclusive to that service, and refuses to carry any third party content on their service unless there's an exclusivity deal.
Anyway, let's add "revive the Paramount Doctrine and apply it to streaming services" to my list of hypothetical campaign pledges.
Paramount doctrine 2: anti-trust boogaloo.
