Every Spotify, Youtube, and Pandora user has experienced the same frustration and boredom as a result of having to listen to an advertisement before they can watch a video or hear a song, the very reason they're using that streaming service in the first place. In theory, subjecting users to ads in between songs and before videos is a clever idea from companies. After all, I'm not going to just quit watching a video just because Tony the Tiger is telling me to buy Frosted Flakes. I'm not going to stop listening to music just because Del Taco has created more garbage food that it wants me to eat. The ads, while they can be very irritating at some points, are more of an inconvenience than a reason to stop using streaming platforms.
Ironically, companies like Coca-Cola, Kellogs, Apple, and Johnson & Johnson pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to have their ads run on Spotify, Youtube, and the radio. However, in my experience, having those ads interrupt the media experience that I was pursuing just makes me resent them. I feel, if anything, less inclined to buy face wash from St. Ives after they have basically harassed me when all I wanna do is listen to Grimes. Every time I walk by Pampers in the store, I feel physical disgust after them having disrupted me so many times. In my experience, it has been counterproductive for companies to run ads on streaming platforms because it just conditions me to be annoyed by them and less likely to buy their products. It is the equivalent of bad publicity to me.
Another part of ads that air on music or video streaming platforms is the fact that the media platforms provide services (always for an extra charge) that will stop the ads, along with other benefits to make them more appealing. Spotify Premium, for example, has 5 benefits that just regular Spotify does not. It offers no ads, unlimited skips, the ability to download music, the ability to play any track at any time (as opposed to shuffle play), and higher quality audio. Youtube Red allows for offline access to music or videos, no ads, the ability to download things, and even offers original series. For Spotify in particular, they try to encourage more users into paying monthly for Premium by limiting everything that they possibly can about the app.You can't even listen to a song that you want to listen to, you just have to wait for it to come up on shuffle. All these limitations make me feel less inclined to use the app in the first place because it is so inconvenient. This is similar to the way that the ads make me feel. They are so in my face all the time, constant and extreme, that I don't even want to buy the products or use the app. Maybe if the ads were not so frequent and the limitations of the app were not so bad they would be more effective on me. Sometimes less is more!
xoxo,
Maevey
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