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owl [soylentnews.org] writes:

NYT link: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/19/business/media/netflix-amazon-disney-ads.html [nytimes.com]

Archive link: https://archive.ph/7BTfH [archive.ph]

The two titans of the video streaming wars — Netflix and Disney+ — have long resisted commercials, showing a reluctance to have premium series like “Stranger Things” or “The Mandalorian” run alongside commercials hawking dish soap, soda and medications.

“No advertising coming onto Netflix — period,” Reed Hastings, one of Netflix’s co-chief executives, said several years ago, a point of view he repeated for some time. “We don’t believe that the consumer experience would be a particularly good one if we had advertising on Disney+,” Christine McCarthy, Disney’s chief financial officer, said in late 2020.

But now, the streamers are starting to come around on Madison Avenue.

After announcing financial results for a difficult quarter, in which Netflix lost subscribers for the first time in a decade, Mr. Hastings told investors on Tuesday that the company planned to look into a lower-priced tier supported by ads “over the next year or two.”

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