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Advertising Businesses

'Pause Ads' Creep Onto Hulu, Peacock and Max As Streamers Seek New Revenue (variety.com) 53

Posted by BeauHD from the we're-on-to-you dept.
Brian Steinberg reports via Variety: So-called "pause ads" -- they only turn up a few seconds after a viewer has decided to halt the programming, and not every time one does -- are seeing new movement in the streaming world, with the format appearing more frequently on Hulu since July, according to Josh Mattison, senior vice president of revenue management and operations for Disney Advertising. Pause ads are also in motion in venues such as NBCUniversal's Peacock and Warner Bros. Discovery's Max.

As more media companies seek to goose subscriber rates by offering cheaper ad-supported versions of their streaming services, this type of commercial may become more handy. One of the main attractions of streaming, after all, is that it boasts fewer traditional commercials than its linear TV counterpart. The industry hopes that a pause ad -- other "out of pod" commercial experiences are also in development -- can appear on screen without upsetting a subscriber who gets viscerally roiled by the prospect of a glut of typical TV spots.

Others have also found ways to work ads into the moments when streaming fans come to a stopping point. NBCUniversal's Peacock launched with pause ads, says Peter Blacker, executive vice president of streaming and data products for NBCUniversal's ad-sales division, while Warner Bros. Discovery's Max introduced them in 2022, says Ryan Gould, head of digital ad sales and client partnerships at the company. No one has been holding back on the new format. Hulu has experimented with pauses since at least 2018, and an early version of the idea surfaced last decade when Coca-Cola and Universal Pictures tested concepts with ReplayTV, an early backer of digital video recording technology. Coke, which once used the slogan "the pause that refreshes" to great effect, and Charmin, the Procter & Gamble toilet tissue that can offer succor during many breaks in TV viewing, tested the format with Hulu in 2019.
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'Pause Ads' Creep Onto Hulu, Peacock and Max As Streamers Seek New Revenue More

'Pause Ads' Creep Onto Hulu, Peacock and Max As Streamers Seek New Revenue

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  • Don't really mind those kinds of ads, I am pausing because i want to go off an do something so show all the ads you want.
    They are like the ads on a kindle, yea I see them when I am turning it on but so what on that, they don't interfere or cause me to pause what I want to see or read.
    What does bug me about them are how non-personalized they are. Especially for amazon why am I getting all these ads for romance novels, I have never read one or purchased one. Give me ads of things I am interested in, give

    • Re:Don't find those. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Waccoon ( 1186667 ) on Monday October 23, 2023 @08:12PM (#63947603)

      On YouTube, I frequently pause the video so I can better read a piece of text or get a better look at something. I can't stand it when I pause the video, and the UI obscures part of the screen. It's especially annoying as pausing the video completely obscures the subtitles... because screw deaf people.

      Not everyone pauses something because they want to make a sandwich.

      • Yep, I hate that too. At least on YouTube it is just the tiny controls/jog at the bottom. Rumble just pushed a change on their site and now it dims the ENTIRE video screen and puts huge controls in the MIDDLE OF THE SCREEN. AND IT SLOWLY FADES OUT when resume play, just to be even more annoying. Oh, and to be even MORE annoying, you can't just click anywhere to resume, it MUST be on the play button now. Yeah, you can click ANYWHERE to pause, but ONLY on the play button to resume. What genius thought o

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Mitreya ( 579078 )

        I can't stand it when I pause the video, and the UI obscures part of the screen.

        Don't forget the video suggestions that superimpose over the last few seconds of a YouTube video. Even without a pause the video is obscured -- if there was something significant at the very end of your video, too bad.

      • With Hulu and Netflix, hitting the back button on my remote will clear the UI and give a full, clear shot of the screen. This works with the built in streaming apps on my Samsung TV and with the Roku box (Roku was best move I made re: streaming). BTW, this doesn't work on Paramount+: the back button takes you back out the video that you're watching.

    • I mainly pause for these things:

      To read the subtitles (when watching Spanish content with Spanish subs) when they go too fast.

      To halt the film to discuss a scene with the girl friend

      To halt because I need to take a call / concentrate on something else.

      Any service that would not let me pause video would get cancelled quickly. It's bad enough that
      there's too much navigation on screen when you pause which covers up subtitles.

  • After a few experiences with this, people will soon figure out it's best to hit pause then mute.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by mysidia ( 191772 )

      Ay... This is why media creators/content distributors should Never have been allowed to make their content exclusive to a particular Software app or kind of client hardware. The moment the app gets integrated with Televisions... You can bet they'll add some feature to "Block the mute and power off buttons" from taking affect until after the Ad finishes playing.

      • You'll find that, no matter what you do and no matter how you try to tie down the TV, there is still the matter that at some point, you need to pump that audio out of the box and the power into it.

        And on both cables, I'm the final arbiter who says whether electrons flow or not.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Sloppy ( 14984 )

        Repeal DMCA. 1201 is what effectively mandated product-tying between content and its player.

  • There has to be a way to stop this idiocy. If we don't, its pretty clear that Idiocracy was telling the future.

    In my world view, being force fed opinions of others is a terrible idea for the human mind and the human race.

    If money is the avenue, then all of the worst of humanity is what ends up being advertised back to ourselves. Its a recursive problem.

    --
    If you stop at general math, you're only going to make general math money. - Snoop Dogg

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mysidia ( 191772 )

      If we don't, its pretty clear that Idiocracy was telling the future.

      Idiocracy is not just telling the future - it is telling the present. We're 90% of the way there.

      At this point the cost of stopping the Idiocy is so high that people wouldn't want to.

    • >"There has to be a way to stop this idiocy. If we don't, its pretty clear that Idiocracy was telling the future."

      1) Your feedback. Tell the company how you are unhappy about it.
      2) Your wallet. Cancel service and make sure they know why.

      • If you cancel our service, it can only mean that you're a dirty, dirty thief and downloader. You HAVE TO be. It's unfathomable that you somehow can survive without our crap!

        • "Sounds like grounds for a search warrant to me. They cancelled the service and object to ads? Break it down!"

  • They have outlived their usefulness. Liquidate everything. Start over from scratch. Blackball anyone that worked at the previous companies marketing departments and C-suite.

    • As long as these black balls are heavy, tied to some sort of body part and they then take a swim, we can talk.

  • im dropping paramount+ over this (Score:3)

    by MobileTatsu-NJG ( 946591 ) on Monday October 23, 2023 @08:10PM (#63947599)

    I reached out to Paramount+ for an explanation of what they think 'ad-free' means and they ghosted me. So... okay, when this season of a show I'm watching finishes up in a couple of weeks I'm dropping them. It's not just the pause-screen ads, they have unskippable ads for their other shows.

    No.

    No.

    No.

    NO ADS. I'm paying full price. No ads, no ads, and no ads. No ads Paramount, no ads. FFS

    on another note- disneyplus has decided to go from $80 a year to $110. They got the axe from me as well.

  • The industry hopes that a pause ad -- other "out of pod" commercial experiences are also in development -- can appear on screen without upsetting a subscriber who gets viscerally roiled by the prospect of a glut of typical TV spots.

    I'm roiled. Eff your ads

  • Throwing more ads, hiking prices, chasing down people who might have two TVs in separate locations is just going to ensure that we go back to the mid 2000s where people are back to the torrents, Congress will be proposing more SOPA/PIPA laws (which mean that people just run to offshore seedboxes and VPNs, and ultimately ensure true pedos, criminals and terrorists are out of reach by police, in the hunt for IP violators), which only will result in further advances in the cat and mouse game. Ultimately, peop

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tom ( 822 )

      There is also the fact that the world really is caring less about American IP, or IP in general, especially with wars going on, both externally and internally, and a general reactionary shift across the globe, so in some places, piracy of IP may be something to be encouraged as a middle finger to "the West".

      "may be" ?

      Yandex, the Russian Google, is possibly the world's largest pirate site. Want to watch any movie and don't mind Russian subtitles? Search for it in Yandex and stream it right from there.

      I'm pretty sure the arab and chinese worlds have similar sites.

  • Soon these streaming services will catch up to network television, and people will finally be able to see advertisements 8 minutes out of every 30, ONLINE!!!
  • When I got AT&T TV, which was reskinned DirectTV, it had pause ads. That was the last straw; cable soon went away from my house. Pause ads are one of the most offensive developments in TV that I can remember. I will go back to my box of laserdiscs in the garage before I subscribe to a service that inflicts them on customers.

  • poison (Score:2)

    by Tom ( 822 )

    One of the main attractions of streaming, after all, is that it boasts fewer traditional commercials than its linear TV counterpart.

    Until it doesn't. We already moved down from "no ads" to "fewer ads".

    It'll increase until it's at the "max that average viewers tolerate" level of TV. Then something new will appear, without ads, and people will go there. Repeat.

  • When shit like this gets too bad.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by genixia ( 220387 ) on Tuesday October 24, 2023 @03:43AM (#63948277)

    I introduce 'Pause Subscription'.

    I haven't yet discovered what it takes to make me un-pause.

  • Once streaming became a thing, I stopped watching ads period. I can't even watch cable or broadcast TV anymore. The ads are just too jarring. Once a streaming service introduces mandatory ads (on pause or otherwise), I'm gone.

  • The more ways an advertiser tries to get their ad in front of me, the more likely I am to add that product to a list of products NEVER TO BUY EVER. I maintain this list on paper and consult it frequently.

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