As you know, there are only three business models: I pay, you pay, or someone else pays. While everyone says they hate commercials, ad-supported business models simply refuse to die. Why? “Free” (aka “someone else pays”) is very compelling for both consumers and shareholders. So compelling, in fact, that our friends at Netflix are looking to introduce their lower-priced ad-supported tier by the end of the year.
This has been a long time coming. We paid for cable, but had to sit through ads anyway. We paid more to watch without commercials. Expensive as it was, clearly it wasn’t enough. So… it’s baaack!
Get ready to pay for Netflix with commercials. Sure, it will be cheaper. Yes, it will suck. And yet… lots of people are going to do it because cheaper is, well, cheaper.
This raises the question: If you had a choice to purchase a lower priced ad-supported Netflix or “borrow” your cousin’s password for the more expensive ad-free tier, which would you do? “Objection, your Honor.” It’s OK, you can plead the Fifth.
Author’s note: This is not a sponsored post. I am the author of this article and it expresses my own opinions. I am not, nor is my company, receiving compensation for it.