I have a real pet hate. It’s paying for an ad-free subscription and getting ads anyway. On Spotify Premium, I press play on a podcast and it opens with an ad, or drops one in the middle. On YouTube Premium, I’m settling into a video when the host says “brought to you by our sponsor” and off they go, introducing me to Squarespace or something like it. It’s death by a thousand cuts for subscriptions, followed by a final kick on the ground in the shape of an ad. And it irritates the hell out of me.
An ad-free subscription on Spotify or YouTube removes the ads the platform itself serves, not the sponsorships creators build into their content. Now, Disney+ has updated its subscriber agreement so every plan, including Premium, can carry ads before and after movies and series. Disney calls it a clarification and hasn’t said when any ads will start, but I don’t think anyone should be shocked, and I’ll get into why shortly.
What are the new Disney+ ads terms?
Disney+ can now show ads before and after movies and series on every plan. Disney’s email to subscribers says all plans may include promotional content, sponsorships and adverts before or after playback, as well as in live events and channels.
Ad breaks in the middle of a film or series are still exclusive to the cheaper Standard with Ads tier, according to Disney’s help centre. Live events and linear channels carry ads regardless of plan. The terms also warn that some promotions may not be skippable, as covered in this breakdown of the Disney+ subscriber agreement changes for every plan.
For now, Disney hasn’t said whether Premium will start playing ads before and after content on the current ad-free tiers, and its on-demand library is still meant to run without interruption on Standard and Premium. Some of the wording isn’t brand new either. The US version of the Disney+ subscriber agreement already describes its “no ads” tiers as generally free of commercial interruptions, with exceptions for live content and limited promotional material. The overall change may be due ESPN arriving on Disney+ in Europe, which makes sense given how much live sport runs on ads.
This isn’t proof that ads are about to be wedged into every film. However, the door is now wide open. It does remove a hard guarantee, though, and companies don’t tend to rewrite their terms for fun. A pre-roll or a post-roll on a plan that was sold on being ad-free is exactly the sort of small cut that adds up.
I don’t have Disney+ and I’m not planning to. I have enough subscriptions as it is, and Disney+ is on the BDS boycott list. I’ve reviewed tech in from companies on that list, but I don’t want to financially contribute to any of them.
Why the Disney+ ads change was always coming
To be honest, I’m not surprised by any of this. They were always going to come into the market cheap to get users, always going to put the prices up, and always going to bring in ads. Next there’ll be another tier, even dearer and properly ad-free, and in a couple of years that one will have ads too. You’ve got to keep the shareholders happy.
Spotify and YouTube already sell ad-free with strings attached
Spotify Premium is ad-free music, not ad-free podcasts. Spotify’s podcast ads support page says some podcasts may include advertising, host-read endorsements or sponsorship messages, and Premium subscribers can still get Spotify’s own ads on audio podcasts. In my experience it’s nearly every podcast I listen to.
YouTube Premium has the same gap. The YouTube Premium benefits page says you may still see branding or promotions embedded in the content by the creator. Linus Tech Tips is probably the channel I watch most, and they’ve made a joke of the sponsor segue. Every single video has one, and it’s part of the content. YouTube’s answer is Jump Ahead, which lets Premium members skip the sections most viewers skip, often the sponsor read. That said, I shouldn’t have to hunt for a button to get what I’m already paying for.
Who is to blame for ads on ad-free subscriptions?
The platforms are to blame, not the creators. Creators deserve to be paid for their work, and a sponsor read is how a lot of them pay the bills. If a platform sells me an ad-free experience, it should be paying creators enough that the ads get stripped out, all of them. Simple as that.
YouTube says it shares Premium membership fees with creators based on how much you watch of them. Maybe creators still earn less when Premium strips the ads out, and with a sponsor segue in nearly every video I watch, I don’t think whatever share they’re getting is enough. Ultimately, it’s the consumer that pays, and the price keeps climbing, as I covered in the YouTube Premium price hike in Ireland and the Spotify price hike in Ireland.
Is it any wonder that people have started researching Plex, JellyFin and homelabs in general.
I understand the other side of it. If everything is free, you’re the product. That’s exactly why this stings, because when I’m paying I’m the customer, and the platforms are still getting to sell my attention on top. Right, rant over.
What a fair ad-free subscription looks like
One that is genuinely ad-free, with no small print. Every platform should sell that tier, and I’m perfectly okay with ad-supported content sitting alongside it for anyone who’d rather pay less or nothing. What I’m not okay with is paying for the ad-free tier and being sold to anyway, while the platforms benefit the most and creators sit way down the list. If anything, creators are closer to feeling hard done by, like customers, than feeling like they’re winning.
Ad-free should mean ad-free, and right now Disney+ is making that harder to believe.
