Netflix will show generative AI ads midway through streams in 2026

I'm all for services making a reasonable profit and being able to fund new shows and such endeavors...

But we're rapidly getting into an environment of "soaking viewers for all we can get out of them" simply to feed the fucking shareholders ever larger payouts.

Thank you Milton Friedman. 🖕

🙄 🤡 🖕

YAHAR!!!!! HOIST THE MAIN SAILS!!!!

They want the old cable tv days back, but worse

This gem might need an update.

“[Netflix] members pay as much attention to midroll ads as they do to the shows and movies themselves,” Amy Reinhard, president of advertising at Netflix, said, per the publication.

Amy, I want you to be honest with me, are you an alien.

Because on planet Earth we do not, if fact, pay as much attention to the ads as to the things we're actually interested in. Famously our brains even produce this fascinating effect to spare us from the bullshit you're shoving into our eyeballs.

Netflix will what now? Sorry, I was busy canceling my netflix account.

Kidding, I canceled it ages ago when the $10 version became SD-only with ads.}

Why do we keep paying people like this to enshittify everything?

They show me an ad, and they are out. It is that simple. Luckily, my life does not depend on streaming.

If I pay for a service and get ads, that service is dead to me forever.

i just subscribe to the netflix tier that serves all streams as torrents

Yarrr

Between that, price hike, and some weirdly low quality content because you don't use this or that browser, netflix really wants people to stop their subscriptions it seems.

94 million people decided $10 a month savings was worth watching ads rather than doing without. Fuck em. They are the reason many things only have an ad supported tier. Pay for stuff or pirate it, but don't use ad supported tiers when you have a choice.

I've gone back to books.

“[Netflix] members pay as much attention to midroll ads as they do to the shows and movies themselves,” Amy Reinhard, president of advertising at Netflix, said, per the publication.

In terms of attention, she's either lying or admitting that members barely pay attention to their content.

No they won't 🏴‍☠️

Either they have great technology, or they have great entertainment,” she said. “Our superpower has always been the fact that we have both.

Please. Your software is an image carousel and a video player.

"Millions of former subscribers will cancel their accounts in 2026"

FTFY

The sooner people realize that the subscribers are nothing more than super-slow-boiled frogs to them, the better.

Is this feature coming to Sonarr/Radar + Jellyfin? /s

So the dead Internet extends to streaming.

Also anyone else interested in just crazy an ai add what will be.

ads will continue until subscriptions improve

I was looking to cut down on subscriptions and picked Netflix as an experimental one. I haven't missed it at all. Things like this make me less likely to occasionally reactivate for a couple of months as I was originally planning.

I wonder when they'll see a big enough effect to break their current run of fucking over their customers.

Soo... the ad income is higher than the energy costs of gen. AI? They lied about the pennies per visit? 😢

Also, 🏴‍☠️

Well piracy is the only way then.

Each day brings us closer to either Cyberpunk 2077 or Bladerunner

I'm sorry, did you say Netflix is going to be pirated aggressively for the few shows that aren't complete slop?

Well, time to cancel finally I've gotten used to torrenting again anyway

There is no way this doesn’t wind up making an ad that's misleading enough to get Netflix and/or the advertiser in trouble

Bye Netflix, hello plex.

Edit: hello Jellyfin, as helpful users have mentioned the enshitification of plex to me.

Luckily I haven't paid for a streaming service in years.

I recently setup my own Jellyfin server with qbittorent search plug-ins and its so easy. Netflix is really playing with fire here cause people will leave when pushed enough as it's becoming so easy to switch. You can just hop on your friends server too

Annnnd goodbye Netflix subscription

The shittyfication goes forward...

Is there a way to poison the well so badly and so irrevocably that corporations won't dare use generative AI for anything? Can we somehow trick these overgrown chatbots to speak ill of their masters in the form of direct-to-stream advertisements?

And canceled my sub

why do people still pay for that shit

I can't tell from the article what the AI side of this is? Are Netflix offering to make adverts for customslrs using AI? Are they just showing adverts in general from customers, including AI generated ones?

I don't know if I'm doing something wrong, but I've read the article twice and still don't know 😂

Eventually they will start making shows based on the user watching the show.

Please see Black Mirror, Series 6, Episode 1, "Joan Is Awful"

Netflix doing their best to lose whatever customers they have left rofl

I dunno at some point I’m just gonna stop watching tv and find other ways to entertain myself.

Netflix can fuck right off as I cancel my subscription and board the Jolly Roger

Not to me, they fucking won't

If I down vote this does it show my disappointment of netflix or the OP? 🤔

plex jellyfin ftw!

Ahhhh, man moving away from corps just keeps on giving (or in this case, doesn’t enshitify while proprietary ones do).

Jellyfin

I mean, this is for the ad-supported tier. For $8/mo, it tells you right there it includes ads when you sign up.

I used this service in a rental for the first time in a few years. It sucks compared to other streaming services. I don't even know what people are possibly watching on this thing.

I haven't had streamslop subs in years.

Been sailing the seven seas ever since, and I'm watching it all burn from the crow's nest.

Haha, the kicker is that it's pure greed. With their prices they don't need it and could improve it with what the community wants, but $$$, hey... been away for nearly 2 years now, thought of tipping my toes in again but with that they can f... right off.

What the fuck is up with that image of Wednesday?! It doesn’t look like Ortega’s Wednesday to me. Is it ai generated?

!piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com Piracy ftw!

Aside from 🏴‍☠️ there are simply too many legitimate pay streaming options in 2025 for Netflix to think they can do this. This will end like an arrogant urban cowboy being flung off a mechanical bull and I'm all for it.

I like that they give everyone an exact date to cancel their membership.

Is your egg too expensive?
Look no further. Our egg is much smoother and can be worn with most garments.

EggEgg. For your egg.

Half of new Netflix subscribers opt for the $8 per month option rather than ad-free subscriptions, which start at $18 per month, the company says.

Damn, when did it get so expensive? Assuming that's USD. That's a decent amount more than Disney+, right?

byeeeee

Haven't had Netflix since the password debacle. Never even missed it. 🏴‍☠️

After that comes the part where the AI hallucinates a world where advertising guidelines don't exist and gets the company sued for some very illegal advertising.

If you see Netflix as part of a bundle, get the bundle without it. You having no choice to get out of the subscription is feeding into this.

Nice ahoy mateys!

Lol

Not that it means anything here, but I'll definitely not partake. Hard pass.

Aaaand I'm so glad I cancelled Netflix this year. All the new shows are kinda trash anyway.

Torrents are great btw

Netflix was canceled even before twitter. It was nice until 3-4 years ago, when the quality of their service started to fall.

Is there a plugin for Stremio that provides a kid's profile function? That's the only thing keeping me from canceling my Netflix subscription.

The only reason I have netflix is because I stayed logged into my moms account after moving out. Once she dies or decided to stop paying it is when I will no longer have netflix. Im fine with losing it. I dont watch it much anyways. But now AI ads? Fuck no. They’ve been bad enough on youtube. Im considering getting a lyfetime membership to nebula and ditching youtube all together

Annnnnnnnnnnnnd it’s gone

Hey Netflix, the amount of Ads people are willing to endure for a paid subscription is ZERO and it will always remain so. In fact even the stupid games advertised on the top of the landing page made me use Netflix less and less, and now that they stopped password sharing I don't use it at all

Hate to see it but... it makes sense.

It's wrong, sure, in many ways (privacy, ecology, ethically depending on the dataset) but if there is 1 application where generative AI ads would make sense is through a personalized stream. So... yes it's bad, consumers might reject it, but it's not the actually dumbest way to use a terrible technology.

To be clear, again, I 100% hate it but if I was a greedy Netflix stakeholder I'd think "Hmmm yes, maybe!".

Canceled two years ago. Not coming back.

hahahahahaha

I'm not familiar with how Netflix's ad tier works and am almost afraid to ask, but could someone ELI5?

If a company wanted to push an ad on Netflix, wouldn't it be up to them to decide whether to use AI make the thing? Or is this sort of the equivalent of a small business sending a script to the local radio station to have the DJ read it (i.e. rather than producing their own ad), except they add some AI-generated visuals?

Cool. Won't affect me, but good to know.

YAR HAR HAR HAR

One use for AI would be to eliminate all ads. The AI giveth and AI can taketh away. Lol

Stremio plus real debrid. All the services easily on any device.

Quit netflix ages ago, but is add blocking not going to work here? I addblock on hulu no problem.

Ads are ads, who cares if it's AI generated?

Amy Reinhard sounds like an asshole

Netflix peaked when it was supporting shows like Dark and Mindhunter and drove off the cliff since. My wife will subscribe for a month to watch a new season of a show like You and then cancel it again. That's versus back in 2017 when I just had the subscription all year.

I’M HERE FOR IT. This is the future, and I’m genuinely invested in this (I’ve spoken to marketing industry people about how cool this could be).