Free subscription video services -- those that come with heavy amounts of TV commercials -- have questionable consumer demand.
Overall, when a study asked respondents if Netflix or Hulu
offered a free TV service but you were required to watch TV commercials, 70% says they would watch; 30% said they would not, according to a recent TiVo survey.
But drilling down to specifics
yielded other results. Research said 83% of those viewers would tolerate only one to four TV commercials in a 30-minute show.
Personalized TV commercials based on viewers interest didn’t
seem to matter much. Only 14% said they would tolerate commercials if they were more relevant; 86% saying they weren’t interested at all.
In this regard, the study says it supports
Hulu's decision to essentially de-emphasized its free version: “It would be very difficult for a SVOD to be successful with this limited number of revenue-driving commercials.”
In
a related question, concerning a possible price hike for the commercial-free Netflix service, respondents 39% said the most they would pay is between $12 and $15 a month; another 30% said they would
not pay more than they are already paying.
The survey was done in the third quarter of this year among 3,140 respondents aged 18+.