News has circulated that Netflix is planning to piss off its users by introducing a slew of ads to its service, after a news piece on Motherboard stated that the service was looking to introduce advertisements during shows and movies hosted on the platform.
Netflix has now confirmed that these ads will only be for other Netflix content that may be of interest to their viewers, and the current plan is to roll out a limited test that will see short teasers for Netflix Originals being broadcast at the beginning of a show. It won’t be as intrusive as had been speculated in the initial kneejerk reactions to the news, and Netflix has stated that it may not produce a full-scale rollout of the test.
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Speaking to Gizmodo, a spokesperson for the company said: “We are not planning to test or implement third-party advertising on the Netflix service. For some time, we’ve teased Netflix originals with short trailers after a member finishes watching a show.
“Some members in a limited test now are seeing teases before a show begins. We test hundreds of potential improvements to the service every year. Many never extend beyond that.”
Did anyone actually believe that Netflix would effectively kill off one of its services biggest selling points by littering it with intrusive ads? While we may see some form of advertisement for Netflix Originals grace the platform in the future, suggesting that they’d flip the bird at their subscribers by allowing third-party commercials for cleaning products and the like to interrupt their users’ broadcasts is ludicrous. Of course they aren’t going to do that. Netflix has become so popular because it is the antithesis of television, and aping it would only lead its members to begin to look down other avenues, namely its competitors such as Amazon Prime Instant Video and piracy.
So while Netflix may or may not introduce short teasers for its Netflix Originals shows in the future, don’t expect to see any ads for Colgate toothpaste during an episode of House of Cards at any point soon.
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