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Hulu and AT&T to Test 'Pause Ads' in 2019, Automatically Playing Commercials When You Hit Pause
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Yes, there are shades of gray. I didn't say the media companies are the good guys (in many ways they are not), I said that the pirates have recurring habit of convincing themselves, on the basis of the slightest of provocations, that they are "the good guys".
I watched a lot of piracy going on in the beginnings of the digital music era that was... it was basically looting. When you see people protesting, and that protesting starts out as "down with the man! we are being oppressed! we have this list of grievances!" and then it slips into "... and therefore I am completely justified in taking this TV and microwave out of this smashed-in store"... you've stopped fighting for a cause and become an opportunistic thief, a looter. There was a lot of that in the Napster era, "the record companies are bad! ... I'm going to download all these songs that they produced! I'm not actually stealing because I'm only making a copy!" That was looting (if you really wanted to protest, stop buying the record companies' music, and stop listening to their music - go start a band, or support local bands). There were an awful lot of people justifying it to themselves as "I'm protesting! I'm sticking it to the man!" rather than admitting, "I'm looting because I want free stuff". This, of course, is not an exhaustive description of the whole situation back then, but there was a lot of this going on.
There appears to be some amount of piracy going on in the video field these days (I don't know if it's less widespread than in the Napster days, or if I just see less of it), and some attendant amount of people justifying their behaviors to themselves with the same, or similar, really lame excuses ("well, the price is too high, or there are too many commercials, or season 5 ended badly, so I'm just gonna pirate it"). Being upset at someone, or some corporation, does not absolve someone for any actions they take as a result.
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There were four shows, last I checked, that were covered by contracts for the streaming rights that required them to be presented with commercials. The impression I got was that in each case there was someone associated with each show who had a clause in their contract that required some tiny cut of any ad revenue from streaming along with a stipulation that it could not be streamed ad-free - something Hulu could not negotiate around (I've heard people complain that "Hulu wasn't willing to pay more to get it for us without commercials" - this may simply not be possible, given the myriad of contracts involved).
I was watching one of these shows on Hulu, when it was regularly airing ("Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D."). The show was prefaced with a 10 second blurb saying, roughly, "due to streaming rights, this show is required to be presented with commercials". This was followed by one non-blaring commercial of about 20 seconds in length. This was followed by the entirety of the show, uninterrupted. Then, a few seconds before the very end of the end credits, a second 20-second long commercial would run. I expect not many people saw the second one. I usually did, for odd reasons (I like the end logo for Joss Wedon's company, which has a little mutant walk across in front of the company name, saying, "Grr! Argh!", which happens like 3 seconds before the very end of the tape - well, the second ad would land right in the middle of that, so you'd get "Grr!"-(20 seconds of the Geico Gecko or something)-"Argh!"). As I said, most people would only see the first commercial.
So, when people get outraged that "the commercial-free Hulu still has ads!" ("and therefore Hulu is evil and bad and wrong!!1!"), they are technically correct that, yes, there are still are a couple of ads in a handful of places. But if they were to actually watch the shows, rather than jumping straight to outrage mode, they'd find essentially nothing to get upset about.
I've been subscribed to the "commercial-free" tier of Hulu for the last several years (through Apple, actually), and I'm quite happy with the service. I don't care much for their opening screens and menu structure, on the Apple TV (they revamped it to show only a tiny amount of information at a time, with big pretty pictures I don't care about, frequently resulting in things like white text on a yellow background, and it spends too much time trying to suggest things to watch, as if I didn't come in the door already knowing exactly what I want). But, hey, it sure looks pretty to the board of directors, and that's what's important. So, I use WatchAid as a front-end to the shows I'm following on Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon (and iTunes). It makes maneuvering around easier. But Hulu's actual streaming, and content, are great.
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I think I would freak out a bit if I paused a show, and content started playing.
I suspect while the ad is playing, the remote controls will be blocked.
I suspect while the ad is playing, the remote controls will be blocked.
Why would they be blocked? How would you unpause then, or just exit, or do anything else?
What is ironic about that is Apple's recent ads are very entertainment-like. Short stories, etc. as they flex their media production prowess.
Yeah, that has been a trend over the years. It’s actually been going on for at least 20-30 years. I remember some commercials that were basically minisodes centered around a product and got people wondering what the next installment would be. It’s genius for the advertising companies but it’s a bad trend for consumers in the end.
Apple should update their Apple TV App Store policy to say that the basic functionality of the pause button should not be altered. The pause button should stop all content playing on the screen. Any app that violates these terms will be rejected immediately without appeal. It's that simple—Apple has the power to stop this right out of the gate.
I do think this would be a good idea, and for streaming apps would make sense, but there are many apps that use the pause button for things other than pausing things.
For example, Alto's Adventure, it is used to activate the wing suit, and in Mikey Jumps, it causes Mikey to jump.
This is necessary for many (most?) gaming apps due to the lack of D-pad and additional buttons on the "design-over-function" Siri Remote.
So, unless Apple specifies that the policy is enforced only on streaming apps, then this wouldn't work.
Yes, obviously for video purposes and not games. If a video is playing, the pause button should never be used to play another video, and can only be used to resume a video that has been paused, etc. Apple's lawyers would write it up more elegantly. I feel like this change of interaction design ruins the user experience and will confuse them. Apple typically disallows things like that in their HIG and could prohibit certain behaviors if warranted.
Maybe it will be based on how long its paused. Anything under 10 seconds, an ad wouldn't start.
I guess then you'll have to pause the pause if you didn't catch something in 10 seconds.
If using tvOS, the stupid screen darkens and a box pops up that many times obstructs the view of what you are trying to see, so you have to pause, get rid of the box, look at you want quickly, all before the ad starts.I guess then you'll have to pause the pause if you didn't catch something in 10 seconds.
Maybe it would be better to just give the user the option to toggle on/off paused screen ads in place of traditional ads.
I haven’t seen it yet. But switched to HBO GO, a month ago. Once I’m all caught up here I’ll go back to Hulu.