One of the great things about Netflix is that there ain’t no adverts, baby. You can just watch and watch and watch and watch and you don’t have to bother with any Cushelle or Toilet Duck or those infernal Nationwide poetry hellscapes. It’s brilliant.
So what Netflix have decided to do is introduce adverts. They’re going to slap their no-advert policy around the muttons with a big wet fish and hop right on that ad-train. YAY!
But don’t cancel your subscription just yet - they reckon it’s all for your benefit.
A Netflix spokesperson said:
“At Netflix, we conduct hundreds of tests every year so we can better understand what helps members more easily find something great to watch.
“A couple of years ago, we introduced video previews to the TV experience, because we saw that it significantly cut the time members spend browsing and helped them find something they would enjoy watching even faster.
“In this particular case, we are testing whether surfacing recommendations between episodes helps members discover stories they will enjoy faster.”
So it won’t be all for kitchen roll, it turns out - it’ll be for your next new TV obsession. It’s trailers, basically. This isn’t the end of the world - one of the best parts of a cinema trip is the trailers, right? So having a tailored recommendation popping up in between episodes can’t be that bad - in fact, it may be welcomed. It won’t be like they’ll make it unskippable, anyway (at least they shouldn’t - that would be maniacal of the highest order).
At the moment it’s only in the testing phases, meaning that it’ll only appear on a few select users’ accounts, so you may not ever see it if it doesn’t prove successful. If it does, then say hello to an ad for Stranger Things 3 between every episode of anything that you watch on Netflix, ever.
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