Get ready for more ads on streaming services, because one study predicts almost 30% of streamers' revenue will come from them by 2028

I hope you like watching ads, because a recent study suggests they'll make up a third of streaming services' revenue in the next few years.

It was only about 10 years ago where it felt like TV was in this really promising place. Streaming services like Netflix were popular, but weren't dominating the industry just yet, there were all kinds of great bits of television being aired at the time, and your favourite shows weren't getting cancelled just because someone with a spreadsheet said a mysterious number wasn't high enough on a chart for some arbitrary reason. That's where we're at now, though, and unfortunately, despite streaming services being less convenient than ever, they're also more expensive than ever, with all the big names semi-regularly raising their prices to make up for the fact that not enough new people are subscribing.

One of the ways Netflix et al have tried to either bring people back or bring new people aboard is with a "cheaper" tier that has ads in it. Cheaper is in quotes there because you're essentially paying what you did for Netflix only a few years ago, only now you can only watch it in one house, the video quality isn't as good, and yeah, just like cable, you've got ads. And it really seems like these ad-supported tiers are the future of streaming services, as in a Global Entertainment & Media Outlook 2024-2028 study held by PricewaterhouseCoopers (via Variety), it predicted that by 2028 "advertising will make up almost 28% of all the money that streaming services make."

In 2023, 20% of streaming revenue came from ad sales, so it's definitely a big jump. The report also notes how there won't be a particularly large growth in revenue overall from 2023 to 2028, which is "likely because consumers are becoming overwhelmed by the number of streaming service choices. Companies are responding by offering lower subscription fees in exchange for showing ads."

This obviously isn't ideal for the ad-haters out there (hi, that's me), and certainly suggests that this way of subscribing to ad-tiers will be moving towards the norm. But hey, at least it's not cable, right?