If you pay for something, should you still see advertisements?

This is one question that has been looming on my mind since the first time I ranted out about advertisements on Sky Cable a couple of years back.

When you pay for a premium Flickr account, do you get ads? No? When I bought myself a Flickr Pro account, the promise was for ads to disappear unless it was absolutely necessary to display advertisements. And Yahoo!/Flickr made good on their promise.

What about SkyCable? No.

Take Nickelodeon, AXN, Cartoon network, Animal Planet, Discovery Channel. All of these channels that feature ads for their own shows during breaks now also feature ads for Sky, Home Cable, and affiliated companies like Sky Internet.

I mean I pay PhP 800 plus (~$16 +) per month for a Sky Cable Gold subscription, and I expect nothing but quality ad-free programming. But what do I get? Advertisements.

It’s even worse these days. Not only do we get advertisements enticing us to upgrade to a higher subscription, but we also get local targeted advertisements inserted by the cable company! By targeted, I mean kid-related ads appearing on Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network, and the like.

I’m okay with organic adverts—meaning those that are aired by the channels and content providers themselves. It’s part of the programming. But when it’s obviously an insertion by the local cable company (like when the regular in-between promos by the channels are obviously interrupted in the middle), then it’s utter crap.

I called up Sky Cable customer service (at +632-631-0000) a while ago, inquiring about a new subscription, and I was told that Sky Cable does not display any advertisements on their cable network, whatsoever, regardless of the subscription package.

Wrong.

We watch Nickelodeon everyday, and we see those crappy ads inserted in between shows. At least Disney Channel doesn’t have those ads—perhaps Disney is strict with implementing a no-ad policy upon their licensees. So far, I’ve been seeing ads by McDonald’s, Nido, and Chuckie. I guess I should call for a boycott of these products if they keep on interrupting my TV enjoyment (yes, I’m very fond of kids’ shows, too!).

Sky Cable even has the gall to advertise about their cheap advertising rates, e.g., “Advertising on TV doesn’t have to be costly,” or something to that effect.

My point is that I paid for something, and I expect the service provider to have recouped their investments and costs from the subscription fees that I, and other subscribers, are paying them. If they would rather earn from selling ad airtime, then they might as well just offer their cable TV service for free to subscribers!

And don’t give me the magazine analogy. Yes, glossy mags are full of ads, but the argument is that the ads are part of what we pay for, particularly for fashion and niche-oriented magazines (like nice images of cars, bags, apparel, gadgets, and even people). And we can always flip through these ads if we’d rather avoid them. It’s not the same with TV programming.

When will Sky Cable stop airing ads?

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