Total Buzzkill
Constructing the mood and vibes for a TV show is an art form. Perfected only by the best screenwriters, directors, cinematographers, actors, and set designers, mood and tension are a specially crafted and understandably ephemeral motif in the entertainment industry. Building a vibe throughout a story, production pros require extensive thoughtfulness, well-timed one-liners, and calculated suspense. However, now, all of that work is ruined by an abrupt 90-second ad break. Imagine being fully immersed in a show about outer space survival, then, just as you’re becoming mesmerized by a high-intensity rescue mission, an over-the-top Target ad comes out of nowhere, blasting an AI-written pop tune about countertop mixers and flashing their blinding red logo across the screen.
Talk about sensory whiplash!
Broadcast television was designed to have natural breaks in the story where advertisers could put their ads. Because television funding was entirely dependent on network advertising, studios intentionally paced their shows in a way that would facilitate advertisement breaks and appease the network. For decades, this symbiotic relationship thrived on the unspoken etiquette of advertising, maintaining viewer attention while preserving the show-watching experience without mood-disrupting ads popping up mid-scene.
However, everything changed when streaming came into play. According to the multimedia advertising company Envato, streaming platforms upended the entire television industry, disrupting pre-production, distribution, financing, and even broadcast models that had been in place since the 1950s. When streaming became normalized in the early 2000s, platforms like Netflix, Hulu, and HBO boasted an online version of the DVD box-set experience. Naturally, entertainment enthusiasts flocked online to enjoy 4K, ad-free media, and users, creators, and distributors were briefly at peace. In those early days, streaming platforms made their money from monthly subscriptions from their users, but like everything else pure and perfect in this world, corporations and shareholders saw an opportunity for a cash grab and they took it. Injecting mainstream advertisements into streaming platforms, money-hungry executives attempted to mimic the old broadcast money-making model, while maintaining a foundation of subscribers, theoretically doubling their money.
Pay to Play
The great advertising wave didn’t wash over the streaming industry until after TV shows made drastic changes to their production style. Corporate suits greedily wrung their hands in the conference rooms at the prospects of squeezing more cash out of their subscriber base. Meanwhile, the entertainment industry answered the desires of their constituents, creating shows with fewer breaks in the story and instead creating a seamless viewer experience, thriving on adless streaming platforms and adopting movie-like pacing.
However, with the surge of cinematic TV series flooding streaming platforms, where would marketers put all of the ads? No longer created with ad breaks in mind, advertisements were randomly spliced in, spoiling dialogue, mood, and entire cinematic scenes of those carefully crafted shows.
Marketing Brew journalist, Kelsey Sutton, says this is where the streaming advertisement bubble burst. “Streaming promised to save us all from all of the frustrations of traditional TV, but loud ads, frustratingly, remain.” With the introduction of subscription tiers, viewer hierarchies were born, breaking the romanticized box-set bingability of OG streaming and replacing the new TV-watching experience with the worst of both worlds. Sutton says, “streaming services have suggested that complaining customers simply upgrade to the ad-free plan,” but it’s obvious that this was their intention in the first place when they bombarded audiences with unwanted ads. In 2025, premium, ad-free streaming subscriptions accounted for 79% of all subscriptions on Apple TV+, Disney+, and Netflix. Clearly, people will pay for commercial-free convenience and unadulterated entertainment, so despite the injustice, streaming platforms have come out on top because of the psychological manipulation of their extra annoying ads.
Via u/9gag
The discrepancy between TV production and ad distribution destroyed the unmarred beauty of streaming. As streaming platforms retintroduced advertisements, they essentially became an equally expensive, more annoying version of oldschool cable. Call it Cable+, if you will. Overly repeated ads, horrendous advertisement timing, and the lingering feeling of media manipulation has sabotaged television storytelling and cinematic nuances. Paying to watch ads rightfully sparked a nebulous fury in many audiences, who still reminisce of the good old days of ad-free, pirated episodes online and DVD box-set binge marathons.
Unskippable Age
Corporations have a habit of creating problems for their users, solving those problems, then patting themselves on the back for a job well done with extra millions in their pockets. Streaming platforms have eased us into complacency over their new advertising techniques, sprinkling in a two minute advertising section here and there over the last few years. Now, sporadic advertising has gotten completely out of hand.
Perhaps if streaming services abided by the unspoken laws of broadcast advertising which protect both the show’s creative intention and the network’s advertising quota, the television industry would still have their integrity. Alas, we live in an age where we need to subscribe to three different streaming services to watch our favorite shows and are forced to weigh the pros and cons of tiered benefit charts. With the golden age of streaming at our backs, all television enthusiasts can do is look forward to the future, hoping that streaming services will inevitably cycle back to the cable TV model, and with it, implement the tried-and-true etiquette of civilized advertising.
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