Why are streamers pushing customers to ads so hard?
Why are streamers pushing customers to ads so hard?
New data from Comcast highlights just how effective televised advertisements are, and why streamers are so desperate to get people on ad plans.
At this point, it’s almost painful to discuss the streaming landscape 10 years ago. Back then, streaming Netflix with no commercials cost $10 per month, and it wasn’t a guarantee that a new streaming service would even launch with an ad plan. Disney+ rolled out with an $7 month ad-free plan in 2019, and didn’t launch an ad-supported plan until 2022.
Things have changed dramatically in the streaming world over the past half-decade. Now, the only streaming service in the United States that doesn’t offer an ad-supported plan is Apple TV, and the price of streaming without ads has exploded as part of a concerted effort to push more customers to ad plans. A new study from Comcast on the effectiveness of different advertising methods gives needed context to that push, helping to explain why streamers so desperately want viewers on ad plans.
The key takeaway of Comcast's “TV Makes Memories” survey is that televised ads make a far greater impression on the average consumer than any other form of advertising. When comparing TV ads to mobile ads, the study found that 26% more viewers looked at a brand message on TV versus mobile, and 36% more time viewing the brand message.
Being exposed to ads on television leads to 2.2 times greater recall than exposure on social media platforms, 2.1 times greater than audio streaming exposure, and 12.4 times greater than web search exposure. The study also found that consumers were 110% more likely to visit a product or service’s website when a TV ad exposure is combined with an ad on social media.
Despite the decline of viewership on linear TV channels, live and on-demand TV are an incredibly effective delivery vehicle for advertisements. No other platform can offer advertisers the reach that TV can, and with streaming now the most-preferred method of watching TV, advertisers see streamers like Netflix and Disney+, with their hundreds of millions of subscribers, as a needed partner as audiences depart cable and broadcast channels.
Streaming services need advertisers just as much as advertisers need streamers. For many years, Netflix was the only streamer that could crack the formula of being profitable without ad-supported streaming tiers. Disney knew it had to embrace ads to make streaming pay, and didn’t achieve streaming profitability until summer 2024, almost two years after launching the ad plan on Disney+.
Ad plans are an increasingly important piece of the revenue puzzle for streamers. Between 2020 and 2026, revenue generated by ad-supported streaming plans rose from less than 5% of overall streaming revenue to 28%, per data from Ampere Analysis. But — again, apart from Netflix, which turned in a profit of nearly $11 billion in 2025 — most streamers are still creating an annual profit of less than $1 billion (if they’re profitable at all), and companies that are trying to make their streaming services their primary vehicle for consumer video need them to pump those ad dollars up. For reference, linear networks in their heyday generated billions of dollars in ad revenue alone each quarter.
For streamers, getting more revenue from advertisers requires more subscribers to ad tiers. Unfortunately for consumers, streamers have decided that one effective method of driving more people to ad tiers is to ratchet up the price of ad-free plans. In the interval between 2022 and 2025, ad-free streaming plans increased in price by an average of $3 per month, and the gap between ad-free and ad-supported tiers is, in the case of some streamers, almost comically large.
| Streaming service | Ad-supported price | Cheapest ad-free plan | Price difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Netflix | $9 per month | $20 per month | $11 |
| Disney+ | $12 per month | $19 per month | $7 |
| HBO Max | $11 per month | $18.49 per month | $7.49 |
| Hulu | $12 per month | $19 per month | $7 |
| Paramount+ | $9 per month | $14 per month | $5 |
| Peacock | $11 per month | $17 per month | $6 |
| Prime Video | $9 per month | $14 per month (starting April 10) | $5 |
Streamers are not only trying to push more customers to ad plans, but they’re also increasing the number of ads that viewers are exposed to. When ad plans were first becoming popular among streaming providers, streamers sold customers on the idea that streaming would still feature markedly fewer ads per hour than watching TV on linear channels. But the creep of more ads onto streamers has been notable; in 2025, HBO Max (called just Max at the time) increased the commercial load on its ad plan to six minutes per hour. That’s still less than traditional TV, to be sure, but doubtless leaves viewers with that familiar feeling of being nothing more than a set of pockets for streamers to rifle through.
We’ve long known that streaming services are pushing customers to ad-supported plans to help them make money, but Comcast’s new survey offers important context as to exactly why, and how much is at stake. Streamers will continue to shove subscribers toward ad plans as their parent companies position them as their main video distribution hubs.
Disney+
Disney+ is a video streaming service with over 13,000 series and films from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, National Geographic, The Muppets, and more. It is available in 61 countries and 21 languages. It is notable for its popular original series like “The Mandalorian,” “Ms. Marvel,” “Loki,” “Obi-Wan Kenobi,” and “Andor.”