The Biggest Mistake Amazon And Netflix Made

Yes, I’m talking about the annoying pre-roll ads that are being played before movies/shows.

One of the best thing from these on-demand streaming services are you can watch your favourite shows ad-free without any interruptions. At least that’s how it’s supposed to be.

If you have an Amazon prime video / Netflix subscription, then you all know what I’m talking about, the annoying ads that are played before the movie/series. it’s okay when it’s done in a movie theatre. When consumers pay for streaming service, they expect it to be ad-free. But forcing them to watch previews, that too seconds before watching a movie is definitely not a good idea!!!

“It’s like trying to sell something else than the things you actually wanted to buy”

Every on-demand streaming service wants to hold on their subscribers. they do this by introducing new content frequently. As long as subscribers are watching they will be paying. With heavy competition among these On-demand streaming services, getting people to explore new shows are tougher, so they advertise their contents in all possible mediums.

Rather than spending a lot on different mediums, they started promoting their content on their own platform. These are called as Pre-roll ads/Featured previews.

Pre-roll ads/Previews — In simple words, its Amazon’s way of telling you that they have something new to watch.

Solution?

There is an alternate solution to this problem. Rather than forcing the users to watch a video, before a show/movie. We can actually influence them to watch not just one ad, all new shows, famous trailers or any content that you wanted them to watch, all by themselves.

There is this habit among many of us — that is asking our friends what to watch. This is the key to our problem.

People spend hours and hours of their time on social media platforms just by scrolling on their wall for new contents. Why cannot we implement the same strategy here?

People wanted to watch new shows and movies every now and then but the problem is they don’t know what to watch and where to watch.

If apps like Amazon and Netflix can introduce a new feature, where it will just stream short videos (<15mins) of movies and series rather than trailers. When they don’t have anything new to watch they will just scroll till they find something interesting.

https://vimeo.com/435289735

(check the above video for better understanding :) )

By this way, you don’t have to force people to watch a teaser, their boredom will do your job without any negative impact and they end up spending more time in the app.

This is my solution to their problem. let me know your thoughts :)

Previously published at https://medium.com/its-just-a-blog/amazon-netflixs-worst-solution-for-a-bigger-problem-%EF%B8%8F-aaf74df8e050