AT&T and Hulu are both apparently now considering a new type of ad that would run when you pause a video, like a TV show on DirectTV or a movie on Hulu, according to a report from Variety. “As binge-viewing happens more and more, it’s natural they are going to want to pause,” Jeremy Helfand, Hulu’s vice president and head of advertising, told Variety in an interview, speaking about cord-cutters or those viewers who’ve only ever known streaming.
Removing ads is now considered a perk for a certain tier of streaming service, like Hulu’s No Commercials offering and YouTube Premium. And long before the advent of streaming, watching TV without ads was a core pillar of paying for DVR service or, many years ago, recording your favorite programs on VHS. So viewers obviously have an expectation that moving to streaming should reliably translate to fewer ads, making this new pause ad idea particularly egregious.