The Marketing Bubble At Work: Netflix Ads

I couldn’t help but notice this beautiful case of the marketing bubble at work.

As you might know, Netflix recently launched a new and cheaper subscription that comes with advertising.

So, a marketing research agency thought it’d be a good idea to ask people whether they thought the advertising was perhaps a bit much.

Low and behold, almost 50% of the respondents indicated that indeed, they thought 5 minutes of advertising per hour was too much.

It shouldn’t be so hard to understand that this is a woefully unimpressive outcome. In fact, that same 50% would probably say even just 1 minute of advertising per hour would have been too much.

Because of course, people hate ads.

However, the marketing research agency thought this was so newsworthy, they wrote a press release about it and sent it to the entire marketing bubble.

And then sure enough, marketing journalists wrote about it because they were just as dumbfounded by this outcome.

Because, they argued, lineair TV comes with 13-17 minutes of advertising per hour. So surely, your ordinary consumer should love a mere 5 minutes of advertising, right?

Wrong. Your ordinary consumer hates ad breaks.