One of the earliest appealing factors of streaming services when they first became popular was convenience. You could binge all of your favorite shows all at once and not get interrupted by commercial breaks like you would watching linear TV. But as more and more companies have moved over to a streaming model, ads have made their way into streaming. If you want an ad-free experience now, you need to pay for the “premium” service.
Obviously it isn’t ideal to have to pay more just to keep the streamlined experience you had before. But where do you draw the line? Are you willing to pay more for the ad-free experience of your go-to streaming service, or do you just ignore and mute the commercial breaks to keep your streaming bill down?
I’ve always been willing to pay more for the ad-free experience, but the first time I broke from that was when Amazon Prime started to include ads. My Amazon Prime subscription is something I mostly use for shopping and Prime Video always felt like a bonus add-on. So when the option came to pay more to avoid ads, I chose to just ignore the ads. For a streaming service like Hulu or Netflix where I am specifically paying to be able to watch things, I will most likely cancel before I ever downgrade to the ad-filled experience – especially when there are so many free streaming sites that don’t cost me anything.
What Do You Think?
Where do you stand on ads in streaming? With prices constantly going up across services, are you willing to stomach some commercials to continue your subscription? There is currently a Disney+ promotion going on right now that bundles a subscription with Hulu for $2.99 a month for the first four months, but is that a low enough price to even consider dealing with ads? Let us know what you think in the comments below!
