Netflix and Prime force ads on you. There's a better way.

The thing that annoyed me

I pay for Prime Video and Netflix for one simple reason: no ads. So the first time a promo for some other show started playing before the movie I'd actually chosen, it felt like a small betrayal. I sat down to watch one thing, and the app used that moment to sell me something else.

It's like walking into a shop for bread and being made to watch an ad for milk before they'll hand it over.

Why they even do it

Once I got past the irritation, the business logic was easy to see. Streaming is a brutal retention game: the longer you can't find something to watch, the closer you are to cancelling. Both platforms have enormous catalogues and a discovery problem, so instead of spending on outside advertising, they turned the start of your session into free promo space for their own content. Cheap for them, hostile for me.

The real problem underneath

Here's where I think they got it wrong. The problem was never "we need to advertise our shows." The problem is that people open a streaming app and don't know what to watch. Forced pre-roll promos are a solution aimed at the platform's need, not the viewer's. They answer "how do we push this title?" when the question should be "how do we help someone who's just browsing, bored, and undecided?"

What I'd do instead

We already know how people behave when they're bored and looking for something to watch: they scroll. They open a social feed, thumb through short clips, and stop on whatever catches them. We ask friends "seen anything good?" for the same reason. So instead of forcing a promo on me, give me a place I'd actually choose to go.

A dedicated, opt-in feed of short clips from across the catalogue, movies and series cut down to their most interesting few seconds. You enter it only when you want to, scroll it like any other feed, and tap through to watch the full thing the moment something lands. No forced viewing. No stolen attention. Just discovery that rides the behaviour people already have.

Why it's the better trade

• Nothing is forced. The feed is a place you visit, not an ad you sit through, so the premium, ad-free promise stays intact.
• It uses real behaviour. Scrolling short clips when you're undecided is already muscle memory, this just points it at the catalogue.
• Time-on-app grows on its own. A feed people want to browse keeps them in the app without a single interruption.
• It actually solves discovery. The platform's real problem, "help people find their next watch", gets answered directly instead of side-stepped.

The happy ending

I wrote this as a what-if, a small opinion piece about a fix I thought was obvious. Since then, Netflix has rolled out exactly this kind of feature: a scrollable feed of short clips you browse to find your next watch.