Apple TV+ Apple TV+ Ad-Supported Tier In Works (1 Viewer)

[Ronald Epstein]

Apple ramps up work on ad-supported Apple TV+ plan - 9to5Mac

Apple is ramping up its plans to bring ads to Apple TV+, at least based on the number of recent...

9to5mac.com

At this point, I don't care that Apple is doing what all the other streaming services have done. However, it just gives them a better excuse to raise their prices again, which is inevitable.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Unlike the big boys, though, Apple TV+ will be an easy one to cancel when the shows I care about finish a season because they have such a small amount of original/exclusive content.

 

[dpippel]

Great! Ads and price increases. Perfect.

I'm almost completely fed up with the whole streaming service landscape at this point. These companies are working hard to make streaming as inconvenient, annoying, and expensive as cable or satellite. At this rate, it won't be long before I just stop giving any of them my money.

 

[Bartman]

Will there be ad & ad-free subscriptions? Makes you wish advertising funds would dry up?

I've used ad supported channels for years but ad frequency & duration is way up, so now I avoid them. If you can find something you like, The Roku Channel is still good & Peacock puts its ads up front, are the lone standouts.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Great! Ads and price increases. Perfect.

I'm almost completely fed up with the whole streaming service landscape at this point. These companies are working hard to make streaming as inconvenient, annoying, and expensive as cable or satellite. At this rate, it won't be long before I just stop giving any of them my money.

I am with you 100% Doug.

I won't give my money to these streaming services. I only have Apple TV because I subscribe to their Apple One Premier ($37.95 per month) which includes Apple Music, Apple Fitness (which I use daily), Apple News, and lots of iCloud storage (to name a few offerings).

These streaming services are only shooting themselves in the foot with escalating costs which is creating a surge in online piracy.

 

[Scott Merryfield]

I just canceled my ESPN+ subscription, effective on the 18th. That will leave us with just ad-supported Peacock (free with our Comcast Internet account), ad-supported Paramount+ (got for $18 for a year, and will not renew in September), and Amazon Prime (which we have for benefits other than streaming). Costs are just getting too high for these services.

 

[Bartman]

I justified an ATV+ subscription when Netflix DVD closed because of it's original content & highest streaming quality (bit rates). The $5billion Netflix/WWE deal is an insult to regular subscribers. If WWE ever comes to Netflix (without it being a special subscription) I'll cancel Netflix. NFL on Prime should be a special subscription too! Rant over!!

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Unlike the big boys, though, Apple TV+ will be an easy one to cancel when the shows I care about finish a season because they have such a small amount of original/exclusive content.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record (thankfully the demographic at this forum skews old enough that I don’t have to explain that phrase!), I think that’s the way to handle subscription streaming.

This isn’t cable. You don’t pay an installation fee, need a technician to adjust a setting on an outdoor pole and provide an updated cable box, to commit to a minimum subscription, or pay a cancelation fee inclusive of having said technician come out to adjust your pole and take away your cable box.

I think in general too many people are in the habit of thinking of signing up as being a lifestyle choice the way subscribing to a premium channel like HBO used to be (“We’re an HBO house”, “We’re a Showtime house”, etc) when there’s no reason to do that with apps. My two cents remains to subscribe to an app when it has a program you want to see, and to cancel it when that program has concluded. I don’t think it makes sense to keep any of these services and to say, “Well, I have Netflix, so let me find something on there to watch.” Find out what you want to watch, subscribe, leave after it’s done.

That’s what I do and my streaming costs are significantly lower than cable ever was.

 

[dpippel]

I agree with you Josh, but I also think that it's only a matter of time before every streaming platform out there drops the on-demand subscription model. IMO we'll all be forced to pay for annual commitments before the decade is out, and probably sooner rather than later. I hope I'm wrong.

 

[Scott Merryfield]

At the risk of sounding like a broken record (thankfully the demographic at this forum skews old enough that I don’t have to explain that phrase!), I think that’s the way to handle subscription streaming.

This isn’t cable. You don’t pay an installation fee, need a technician to adjust a setting on an outdoor pole and provide an updated cable box, to commit to a minimum subscription, or pay a cancelation fee inclusive of having said technician come out to adjust your pole and take away your cable box.

I think in general too many people are in the habit of thinking of signing up as being a lifestyle choice the way subscribing to a premium channel like HBO used to be (“We’re an HBO house”, “We’re a Showtime house”, etc) when there’s no reason to do that with apps. My two cents remains to subscribe to an app when it has a program you want to see, and to cancel it when that program has concluded. I don’t think it makes sense to keep any of these services and to say, “Well, I have Netflix, so let me find something on there to watch.” Find out what you want to watch, subscribe, leave after it’s done.

That’s what I do and my streaming costs are significantly lower than cable ever was.

While I agree with you, Josh, I do think you are showing your age regarding how services are added and removed by cable companies these days. It has to be rare for a company to send a technician out "to the pole" to add or remove a subscription. This is all done centrally now, except maybe by a few "mom and pop" cable companies. All of which makes the cable industry's practice of charging installation, termination, and administrative fees all the more ridiculous.

I do remember "back in the old days" in the mid 1980's when I moved into an apartment and ordered basic cable service. Well, there must have already been an active service that did not get downgraded "at the pole" into my apartment, as I received HBO, Cinemax, and Showtime for free until the day I moved out three years later. All for $20 per month (I found the canceled checks when cleaning out old papers during the pandemic lock down).

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I think they’d be closing the door on too much potential revenue if they did that. A big part of the allure in their ad copy is all of the “no commitment” language that they’d be throwing away. A year up front will also give sticker shock to a good number of their subscribers.

Speaking generally, the average consumer doesn’t necessarily make the most cost effective choices when managing subscription services and that’s how these companies make money. Look at the concept of ad-supported in general. They’ll save you maybe $2-5 a month going that way, but your time will be eroded in the process. Most people don’t factor in the value of their own time when making purchase decisions. The average viewer is going to wind up watching an hour of ads or more per month. Federal minimum wage is $7.25, and it’s more than that in many localities. People will give away hours of their time rather than spending less than one hour’s wage to avoid that. Nothing has really changed the needle on that. You’d think after years of most premium streaming being exclusively ad-free, that it would simply be a non-starter among their customers, but it turns out people couldn’t sign up for the ad versions fast enough.

I think if anything changes, they’ll simply widen the disparity between the ad-supported and ad-free tiers, rather than turning away customers. Maybe they’ll institute something like AMC Theaters does with their A-List program, and split the difference between no subscription terms and unbreakable subscription terms. A-List requires a three month minimum subscription, but it’s billed monthly rather than all at once, and if you cancel, there’s a brief waiting period before you can rejoin. Something like that would allow people to subscribe for the length of one of premium cable’s short seasons and cancel. But also, with streaming trying to lock up more big ticket events, I don’t know that they’re gonna want to be in the position of getting something like the Super Bowl and then turning people away from signing up just to watch that.

While I agree with you, Josh, I do think you are showing your age regarding how services are added and removed by cable companies these days.

That’s a fair point, although I was speaking more generally comparing cable at its height to streaming at its height. Still, I’ve never had an “easy” cable install in my life (I’m 41). I got rid of cable in January 2020. As late as the mid-2010s, adding HBO required me to bring the cable box in person to the Time Warner/Spectrum store, and it required a waiting period between when I called to ask for that service to when it could be provided. I had to go through all of that in reverse when I canceled a couple years later. My experience of cable has always been on those kind of antiquated infrastructures where none of it quite made sense but everyone went through the motions anyway. That’s great if it’s changed more broadly in recent years but that wasn’t ever my experience having it.

 

[David Deeb]

Well this will certainly add yet another layer of confusion to the general public….

Who are already confused by and don’t know the difference between Apple TV+, Apple TV box, the Apple TV app, the Apple TV app “Store” and now good old fashioned Apple TV+ with commercials.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

I agree with you Josh, but I also think that it's only a matter of time before every streaming platform out there drops the on-demand subscription model. IMO we'll all be forced to pay for annual commitments before the decade is out, and probably sooner rather than later. I hope I'm wrong.

Maybe for the ad-free tier, but I don't think for the ad-supported tier. More eyeballs means more $$$ from advertisers, so the streamers are going to want to keep the barrier to entry low.

 

[Patrick Sun]

Sigh. I have Netflix (ad tier) and AppleTV via my T-Mobile cell phone magenta plan, so I don't actively pursue the question of "to subscribe or not to subscribe". But I don't much watch content with ads if I can help it, so the more the streaming channels stuff ads into the viewing experience, the less I'm watching them these days. When Apple goes with an ad-tier (which is what my T-mobile plan will default to), I'll watch ATV less as well. It is what it is.

 

[mackjay]

Sigh. I have Netflix (ad tier) and AppleTV via my T-Mobile cell phone magenta plan, so I don't actively pursue the question of "to subscribe or not to subscribe". But I don't much watch content with ads if I can help it, so the more the streaming channels stuff ads into the viewing experience, the less I'm watching them these days. When Apple goes with an ad-tier (which is what my T-mobile plan will default to), I'll watch ATV less as well. It is what it is.

Same here with the T-Mobile plan. This week I watched my first Netflix content with ads and, to be totally honest, it's not so bad...the ads are 15-seconds long. If they keep it that way I won't mind much, since it's free anyway. But in general, I agree with most here that this is a bad development for paid streaming services

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

Will there be ad & ad-free subscriptions? Makes you wish advertising funds would dry up?

I've used ad supported channels for years but ad frequency & duration is way up, so now I avoid them. If you can find something you like, The Roku Channel is still good & Peacock puts its ads up front, are the lone standouts.

Peacock works pretty much the same as the others w/ their ads. They also put ads in the middle if it's a TV series instead of feature-length movie.

_Man_