Apple TV+ might soon be planning to follow in the footsteps of its competitors who are starting to charge their users an extra fee to stream content without ads.
Several new hires at Apple in its advertising sector are pointing toward the reality that Apple TV+ is rapidly investing in building its TV advertising, according to a new report from Business Insider.
The report reveals that Apple has recently hired former NBCUniversal ad executive Joseph Cady as executive vice president of advanced advertising and partnerships. This comes after the company hired former NBCUniversal executive Jason Brum to join Apple’s video ad sales team in June last year.
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A few months later in September, Apple hired former Peacock executive Chandler Taylor as a video ads account manager. Also in October, Jacqueline Bleazey, a former senior director of sponsorships and ad sales at FanDuel, joined Apple's video advertising sales team.
The move from Apple comes after Amazon added ads to its Amazon Video content in January and offered customers the option to pay $2.99 a month on top of their $8.99 monthly subscription fee to remove them, a move that earned the company backlash from its users and a class-action lawsuit.
Netflix launched its ad-tier option in the U.S. in 2022 for $6.99 a month. The streaming giant has recently been planning to remove its cheapest Basic ad-free plan (which was discontinued for “new or rejoining members” in July 2023) for users in the U.K. and Canada this year and later hinted that the change would also affect U.S. customers.
YouTube has even started cracking down on users last year who use ad blockers to stream content ad-free on the platform. The platform began pushing a new notification to users warning them that their video playback would be disabled if they didn’t remove ad block from their web browser and reminded them that they can watch content ad-free by subscribing to YouTube Premium for $13.99 a month.
Apple TV+ currently does not have an ad-tier plan and only offers a $9.99 monthly subscription.
Even though many users have expressed outrage about the integration of ads into content that was once able to be streamed ad-free, Americans are warming up the idea of subscribing to ad tiers when it comes to streaming services. According to a recent survey by data company Disqo, 51% of respondents in the survey said they would likely pay for an ad-tier subscription plan while 37% were unsure.
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