Reminds me of the early days of cable/pay TV here in Australia in the 90s. Part of the incentive of the concept of pay tv was that there were no ads (apart from promos for the channel's other content to fill the rest of that half hour block) and, for a few years, they actually couldn't run commercials by law (sounds amazing, right?) Then on 1st July 1997 it all changed when that law was lifted. The providers were promising that viewers wouldn't really notice much difference and that there would only be about 1 or 2 actual "commercials" during an ad break. Of course over time that changed dramatically and although I personally haven't had traditional pay tv in over 15 years now, last time I checked the amount of commercials and commercial breaks were staggeringly worse than free/normal tv.
My point is: It was always inevitable that streamers would become more and more like the thing they were originally supposed to "replace". They were always going to end up having ads--and once that becomes accepted and expected, they will only increase and eventually they will all do this (except for maybe Apple? 🤔)
And of course, like cable tv and having to supposedly pay for so many channels you never wanted in the first place just to get the 3 you actually wanted (which is a whole other discussion), you supposedly "need" a hundred different streamers to be able to access all the shows you really want.
Welcome to the beginnings of a new age in streaming. Let's face it, society rarely learns 😅
