Let’s get this out of the way right at the top. Long time users of streaming platforms like Pandora and Spotify hate advertising. With a passion. WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum called advertising ugly, insulting and interruptive. And then sold his company to advertising giant Facebook for $17 billion dollars. A quick perusing of the comments of anything related to streaming and ads will quickly deluge you in words like ‘hate,’ disgusting,’ ‘rip-off,’ and ‘suck. It’s a well-trod path. Start-up passion ignites a religiosity among users, who adopt a service and happily march under its banner and then BOOM! The bottom line begins to drown in a sea of red and the ads show up. And what happens when those hateful, nasty, sucky ads show up? Let’s have a look at one platform, the grand-daddy of them all, Pandora
All of which means, ready or not, here come the ads!
But there’s a twist to the story coming right over the horizon, something most users haven’t even considered, but something that will change the game completely. A simple idea really, but one worth considering and a question worth asking.
What if the ads don’t suck? What if the content of the ads is as compelling as the rest of the content? What if….the ads are actually good, provocative and exceptionally non-sucky?
Okay they’ll still be ads and therefore with a suck DNA stitched into their very being, but a markedly lower suck factor might mean the ads are actually bearable and as such, since they will help create an actually viable business model, will become what they are when they grace such riveting content as say, Breaking Bad – a necessary evil.
Author: Christopher McHale
