Netflix will show generative AI ads midway through streams in 2026

31 LorenDB 52 5/15/2025, 11:28:34 AM arstechnica.com ↗

Comments (52)

Brian_K_White · 42m ago
'Netflix regards its advertising business as in its early stages, meaning customers can expect the firm's ad efforts to continue expanding at a faster rate over the coming years. The company plans on doubling its advertising revenue in 2025.

“The foundations of our ads business are in place, and going forward, the pace of progress will be even faster,” '

The exact moment they stopped being a movie service and became an ad service. Google showed everyone the way.

rchaud · 19m ago
Blockbuster was a movie service. Netflix is a straight-to-DVD content mill and has been for a long time.
mystraline · 1h ago
Today is a no better time to set up a storage machine and loaded with Jellyfin.

You can pirate whatever shows, including ones that can't even be legally sold, and run your own service.

If you add the Arrs suite, then you can also get dynamic additions of shows you watch, and just have them show up.

And well, if Meta and ilk can use pirate libraries in a commercial setting, I see nothing wrong in piracy in a non commercial setting.

bayarearefugee · 1h ago
> Today is a no better time

Agreed.

And anyone creating or supporting generative AI built from massive unfettered internet scraping that wants to lecture me on the ethics of violating copyright to sidestep the monstrosity they have built can take a flight to Hypocrite Island and go fuck themselves.

ulrikrasmussen · 23m ago
With Chromecast getting more and more unstable (and not working on LineageOS, forcing me to use Chromium on a laptop) and now streaming services turning to engagement optimizing ad monsters, I guess I'll start doing that.

I had really hoped that the streaming era would have ended up in a better future where I could buy movies and TV shows in the same was as I buy them on Bandcamp: Watch some of it, maybe all of it, for free, and after payment you can either stream it OR download it and play it however the fuck you want on whatever device you want, with whatever software you want.

Ads are not just a question of whether you can pay to turn them off. The mere presence of ads on a platform is pure poison for its content curation, and further gives the streaming vendor incentives to control you as a user and take away your freedom.

johnbatch · 21m ago
I just shut down my NAS and PC that was running Sonarr/Radarr SABnzbd etc. I setup stremio and a debrid service, and it's much easier for me to not deal with all that.

I used this guide - https://guides.viren070.me/stremio

lm28469 · 1h ago
Even manually downloading torrents and watching them from my laptop plugged into a projector like it's 2006 is more convenient than netflix at that point. People who grew up after the peak of piracy really don't know what they're missing
thatguy0900 · 1h ago
Piracy is still peak, there's 0 reason to download anything or install any special software. Just go to yandex and type watch (show/movie) online.
alabastervlog · 57m ago
If it’s just you watching on your laptop, true. Add family and a decent home theater and there are reasons to set up Jellyfin and use torrents.
mystified5016 · 1h ago
Sure if you want a unknown quality stream with extra ads and malware loading down the website.

Who is paying for that bandwdith? (It's you)

amarcheschi · 51m ago
Not that I have done it, but I've heard that usually the first results from yandex torrents are from reputable sites or forums that are quite known to the pirate community. At least regarding torrent, I haven't heard much about streams
kalleboo · 32m ago
What you describe also matches the legal video services
gchamonlive · 51m ago
I honestly gave jellyfin a try but it didn't work for me for several reasons. The server wouldn't find some shows or movies no matter what I did, and I had countless issues with subtitles.

I'd recommend giving jellyfin a try because it's a worthy project, but it's not even a competition, Plex is hands down much more user friendly, if you can excuse the fact that it's closed source.

Now for findability I can't recommend Kagi enough. You can find virtually anything there, no filters and no bullshit results.

alabastervlog · 46m ago
You do have to follow the naming scheme, though 95% of the time all I don’t need to touch the names of tv show episodes, just stick them in the correct folders. The exceptions are mostly anime and shows I could only find on internet archive, as, for some reason, those often come with just the episode number in the name, not the full “s01e14” that basically everyone else uses.

I rename my movies but that takes maybe ten seconds per one I add, tops, and the result is easier to read when managing files later than leaving them as “www.torrenting.com The.Matix.ita.eng.1999[rarbg]” or whatever insane file names they usually come with.

digdugdirk · 1h ago
Do you have any recommendations for resources to learn how to do this correctly/well? Subreddits, forums, etc?
mystraline · 1h ago
Nah, I've been doing piracy since the '80s. I've always been on the edge of 'interesting' stuff.

Getting a machine with lots of storage is first step. Make sure you also get an Intel graphics card. A380 I think. They're amazing at transcoding and color mapping (10bit->8bit). Transcode is very important to support with hardware, since it allows realtime resolution change, colorspace conversion, and pretty much every video file format to mp4. Can be done in CPU but not recommended.

I'd recommend Linux, but Jellyfin works with damn near everything. Use whatever youre comfortable with.

Getting content? First, use Firefox with Ublock Origin. Turn on all filters. Pirate websites are VERY hostile.

Get a VPN that can port forward. PIA and Proton can both do so, and are reasonable priced. VPN keeps simple copyright scanners from attacking your network, legally speaking.

Sites to look for goods: thepiratebay.org still exists. /r/piracy reddit has loads of links. Yandex search of "show torrent" has all completely relevant links. If you have a Usenet subscription to alt.binaries then you can use that method to grab stuff.

I also grab DVDs and Blurays and rip myself. Doing this is great since you may be able to find shows, but special features are almost never included. I use this tool to quickly rip: https://github.com/xenomachina/dvdrip/blob/master/dvdrip.py

https://www.bfloeser.de/posts/bluray/ covers Linux Bluray ripping, including where to download the AACS keys.

jerf · 16m ago
"Getting a machine with lots of storage is first step."

This isn't as true as it used to be. My current Jellyfin server is an old laptop with a 5TB USB hard drive dangling off of it. Syncthing is used to sync the media to another system in my house because I don't really want to rip it all again if something fails.

If you proactively torrent "everything I may conceivably ever want to watch" or are glued to media 12 hours a day but still want it all to be new, then 5TB will go quickly, but 5TB can go quite a ways for people who don't match those conditions.

While a NAS won't hurt anything, the days when you needed one to do anything useful at all are gone. Just like I just slam my entire MP3 collection on to my phone's SD card now... I don't need any sort of windowing setup, or network access, or anything fancy anymore. Not only does it fit, nowadays it's only a fraction of the space anyhow.

username135 · 36m ago
qbittorrent (qT) is a great client with equally great search capabilities. you'll want to install jackett along with it so you can search through a large swath of torrent sites from the qT search.

https://www.qbittorrent.org/

https://github.com/Jackett/Jackett | https://github.com/qbittorrent/search-plugins/wiki/How-to-co...

massysett · 22m ago
OMG after I do all of this, I could have just paid for Netflix and spent that time actually watching content, or doing something other than nursing all this tech.

I abandoned MythTV and rented DVR from Comcast for just that reason.

zrail · 1h ago
You don't even need a dedicated GPU. Any Intel Core-series CPU past 5th gen has a built-in quicksync engine that can handle many simultaneous transcodes.
alabastervlog · 55m ago
I just got an old used workstation that can’t transcode for shit, bumped the ram up and filled it with disks, then made sure my client devices can all handle whatever I throw at them (appleTV) so I never need to transcode.
smirgel · 50m ago
These guides are usually recommended on reddit: https://trash-guides.info/
glimshe · 54m ago
I built my Jellyfin server on $180 PC from Amazon and an old USB HDD. It was basically installing it from the downloadable installer and configuring parts. You will need a client to access it, and Roku works great.

I'm running it on the Windows Pro that came with the device. I'm not saying you should use Windows, I'm just pointing out that you don't need much to run it.

Mashimo · 54m ago
r/selfhosted could be a starting point. Also search for "arr stack", something like this: https://github.com/Rick45/quick-arr-Stack

You don't have to use this, but maybe it inspires you.

If you go the torrent route, there are also subreddits about trackers.

infecto · 54m ago
I am going to go counter to the other reply.

Pay for a seedbox and get access to a single private tracker site and that’s all you need.

mystified5016 · 55m ago
There servarr docs are pretty good, if you already know how to set up Linux servers. Otherwise look at the homelab subreddit
gxd · 49m ago
This is a great opportunity to share my upcoming sci-fi narrative game: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3040110/Outsider/

One of the two main characters is a veteran BBS-era and Internet movie pirate (among other things). I don't necessarily endorse his actions, but he is who he is...

l72 · 14m ago
Cancelled! That was the last streaming service I had. I guess in 2 weeks when it goes dark, I’ll see how long it takes before the family notices.

Anyway my Jellyfin instance is growing every week. Used dvd/blu rays + my library’s great movie selection has been worth the effort.

If there was a Bandcamp but for tv/movies, I’d happily buy from there instead of ripping DVDs!

teeray · 55m ago
Can’t wait to see a smiling dude with a few too many fingers pour an ice cold, refreshing Budveieskkkkker Berr into a gaping mouth-like orifice that appears in his shoulder.
rchaud · 26m ago
I hope that once and for all, we never have to read another HN comment saying "I'd pay for Facebook / Spotify / Prime / whatever" if I didn't have to see ads." They will never remove the ads. Your paying for it simply makes you a more valuable target to advertise to.

Bittorrent skipped a generation due to the 'convenience of these services, but maybe the iPad kid generation will pick up the torch.

ozmodiar · 10m ago
Originally when I started my comment you mentioned watching cable TV (since removed), but I think a lot of people forget that cable TV started out as an ad free service as well. It's just the same bait and switch over and over again. Revenue must be maximized and competition is always either non existent or in collusion.
alnwlsn · 21m ago
Unless you can install a torrent client on an iPad, probably not.
bakugo · 22m ago
The iPad kid generation doesn't know what a folder is, so I highly doubt it.
Xerox9213 · 17m ago
It's even worse: a lot of them don't know an ad when it's presented to them.
ryandvm · 18m ago
I've said it before - if you follow many of our biggest problems all the way down, at the bottom you will find the advertising industrial complex to blame.
sillystu04 · 1h ago
Netflix should try out a free tier which is entirely monetised by ads. Even if it only contains a subset of their library.

Just imagine how much money loveholidays or Jet2 would pay for an advert midway through a travel show, where a customer could press a button on their remote for a holiday purchase link to be sent to their Netflix email address.

Mashimo · 51m ago
Free netflix, but every 45 minutes you have to enter a verification code that is at the bottom of a Mountain Dew Verification Can, 0.5L
growlNark · 33m ago
> Netflix should try out a free tier which is entirely monetised by ads. Even if it only contains a subset of their library.

Wait, people are paying to be advertised to? It's like we learned nothing from newspapers.

SketchySeaBeast · 21m ago
I honestly think the world would be in a better place if there was more local news media, even if it was both ad driven and user supported.
growlNark · 19m ago
Ads fundamentally contradict the role of news. You don't want to get your news from an organization that has two customer bases.
sillystu04 · 10m ago
What's the alternative? Subscriptions aren't affordable for poor people, government funding creates a conflict of interests, and so does relying on philanthropists.
SketchySeaBeast · 15m ago
Sure, if you're going to insist on philosophical purity, but imagining that people are going to pay full price for news is unrealistic. There's a reason we've ended up with "news" being nearly entirely funded by ads.

There's a difference too between the type of ad and the companies behind its reach - Uncle Bob's Local Mattress Shop and Citizens United are two entirely different beasts.

dogleash · 27m ago
> “[Netflix] members pay as much attention to midroll ads as they do to the shows and movies themselves,” Amy Reinhard, president of advertising at Netflix

Well, that's one way to spin "second screen" content that isn't worth paying attention to.

rchaud · 15m ago
I remember Facebook execs making similar statements to push publishers to 'pivot to video' back in 2018, which ended up being a costly disaster. Without a detailed look into their user analytics, these statements can't be taken at face value. They're not under oath, and what they say can't be corroborated.
growlNark · 33m ago
I've not had netflix for years, and I can't say I miss it at all.
an0malous · 58m ago
Xunjin · 23m ago
This explains the entire idea of how the late tech world is evolving. I've been thinking lately, how can we achieve good profit for stakeholders yet keep a high-quality platform?

Can a company at its inception (and legally) limit their profit to stakeholders and the surplus be used in investing in it?

SketchySeaBeast · 10m ago
Stay private, stay humble, and be willing to say you have enough. The problem is "good profit" is a constantly growing number.
an0malous · 4m ago
It’s not just the tech world, it’s every business. It’s basically the function of the private equity industry to enshittify every business.
rchaud · 12m ago
Netflix has been profitable for years without this bullshit. The question you should be asking is why they're spending untold billions churning out mountains of crap that maybe a handful of people watch, before canceling them anyway?
M95D · 5m ago
A lot of people watch that crap. There's nothing else but crap to watch.

Besides, for most countries, there's no alternative to Netflix. In the age of AI and Google translate, Disney doesn't bother having subtitles in the local language.

Profitable is not enough. It needs to grow. In capitalism, growth is an imperative. Did you invest your savings? Do you expect growth? Well, there it is - the imperative to grow. When the possible customers run out, the only way to grow is to enshittify.

Jyaif · 22m ago
Once Netflix has all the industry contacts and the infra for delivering video ads, all they need is to do is open up their platform to the top youtube creators and just like that they have a youtube competitor.

And they'd have potentially higher profit margin because they wouldn't deal with the same volume of video, which means savings on things like storage and content moderation.