An Ad Is A Wish Your Heart Makes
Disney+ may begin to show more ads on its premium subscriber plans, even though the tier is marketed as having “no ads.”
London-based gaming website Dexerto first noticed the change in the Disney+ UK subscriber agreement, which now states that “all Service Plans may include: (i) promotional content, (ii) sponsorships, and (iii) advertisements before/after playback of Content and in channels, live/as-live, special events, and any third-party services content.”
In other words, ads can now appear before and after content on both the basic and premium plans, although not in the kid-friendly “Junior Mode.” This is a change from the previous subscriber agreement, which acknowledged that ad-free tiers might contain “limited” promotional content related to bundles, product integration or sponsorship messaging.
Disney’s not alone in showing ads to previously “ad-free” subscribers; Netflix also includes ads during its live programming regardless of subscriber plans. But Disney+ has had more trouble with churn than Netflix has; Disney+ lost 1.7 million subscribers when Jimmy Kimmel was suspended from “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” last year and lost more when its prices increased a few weeks later.
Disney’s updated user agreement may indicate that Disney+ is making enough money in ad revenue to justify alienating some of its ad-free subscribers. Or maybe it’s not making enough and it’s looking to expand its available inventory.
The Price Of Transparency
Big Tech companies know the value of price and purchase data. That’s why Amazon email receipts and shipping updates no longer include any transaction data in the body of the email. Amazon also blocks Meta’s Muse AI and other outside agents from scraping its site.
But pricing info is becoming more obscure in general, too.
In Europe, Google debuted a new search response protocol earlier this month for price comparison queries and review searches for restaurants, hotels, airlines and other specialized products. Google made the move to comply with new EU laws, although Google says it will degrade the quality of its search results. It’s worth noting that real-time pricing info will be stripped from those Google response pages – another instance of disappearing pricing info.
Now, the latest example comes via the automaker Stellantis (Jeep, Chrysler, Dodge and Fiat are among their brands), which is following other big auto companies in adopting a “minimum advertised pricing” rule for its dealerships, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Quickly finding the cheapest car is now more difficult. And luring in potential buyers based on the cheapest rate they found in an ad is a recipe for poor branding and poor customer experience when the car inevitably costs more than advertised.
Blue Skies for Paramount Skydance?
Paramount Skydance’s path to owning Warner Bros. Discovery is clearer now. The studio reached a settlement in the merger-blocking antitrust lawsuit with California and 11 other states, Bloomberg reports.
Anonymous sources tell Bloomberg that the settlement was more or less determined by California, which has led the charge against Paramount over the last few months. California also faced the brunt of Paramount’s ire; the company threatened to leave California if a settlement wasn’t reached before October, which could have lost the state some 57,000 full-time jobs and up to $21 billion in annual economic output.
Per the Hollywood Reporter, the deal includes a mandate that Paramount commit to releasing 30 films a year in theaters, which is good for California’s economy. Plus, the combined Paramount/WBD must still negotiate pay-TV carriage deals as two separate companies.
Paramount will also avoid having to sell its cable channels, The Wall Street Journal reports. And it will spend an additional $1.5 billion on film production over the next five years, according to The New York Times.
Now that Paramount no longer has to worry about court dates and paying ticking fees to its shareholders, it can turn its attention to closing the $111 billion acquisition – which, by the by, will also put the company over $80 billion dollars in debt.
Sounds like a good time to start introducing more ad inventory?
But Wait! There’s More!
TikTok bans political advertising. But TikTokers are still making thousands per month from political sponsorships through secondary or alt accounts or even more duplicitous ways. [WSJ]
Fox News Media, ABC News, CBS News and NBC News have pulled out of press pool coverage of the White House after President Trump banned CNN, MS Now and Politico from the press pool over the weekend. The situation led to an incident in which a Trump press conference on Monday carried no audio, since there were no news mics there to record him speaking. [The Hill]
Could drone cameras be used for targeted advertising? Residents fighting Amazon’s noisy drone deliveries in Texas worry that they might be targeted with ads for pool equipment after drones fly over their yards. [The New York Times]
Grandparents and baby boomers are unlikely targets of AI services that slopify family photos. [Business Insider]
