I skipped the best Max deal of the year and I hope you did too

Black Friday and Cyber Monday have come and gone, and there were streaming deals galore. With streaming prices constantly on the rise, it’s nice to get some savings here and there, and I jumped at the opportunity to get Paramount Plus for $2.99 a month for the next two months. While it’s not a service that’s usually on my radar, I figured I’d find something to check out within this two-month window to get my money’s worth.

Paramount Plus was far from the only service with an enticing offer, and I’m sure another popular one was the $2.99 per month deal for six months of Max. Admittedly, it’s tough to beat, and if you want a cheap way to catch up on the service’s latest shows and movies, it’s a good get. However, it comes with one massive drawback for me, and I bet I’m not alone. The fact that it had ads was too much for me to bear, and even if it meant a huge discount for six months, I still couldn’t pull the trigger. I don’t fault anybody for picking up the deal because it’s a good one, but it’s just not for me.

Ads are a necessary evil for many services, and I can put up with them when the service is free, like Tubi, but for something like Max, I have to draw the line. When you couple it with the fact that I have to settle for the lower quality of the service, it made for an easy decision for me. Tubi doesn’t stream at very high quality, but for a free service I can’t ask for much more. For Max, paying a monthly fee and still not getting the best features doesn’t sit well with me.

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The value was there, but it wasn’t good enough

I don’t want to deal with ads anymore

HBO Max

I have gotten so accustomed to watching things without ads that it’s a bit of a jump scare to run into them again. I touched on this after I ditched YouTube Premium as the biggest thing I noticed was the return of ads. For something like YouTube, it’s not as big of a deal since I don’t spend a lot of time on YouTube as it is. For streaming services, I don’t want to sit down for a two or three hour movie and spend a half hour watching ads over the duration.

Many streamers have started to make the ad-supported tiers more lucrative by keeping the costs low while making the higher end tiers more expensive. In the case of Max, things like 4K resolution and Dolby Atmos audio are locked behind the most expensive tiers. As somebody who likes to get the best viewing experience I possibly can, I don’t like to miss out on things like that, and it’s a big reason why I skipped the Black Friday deal.

I understand not everybody’s in the same boat as me, but for me, the ads and lack of quality options made it so I had to pass on the deal. In the end, it means I don’t have Max, but that’s not a terrible thing for me because I treat my services as monthly subscriptions that I sub to, binge what I want, and then move on after a month. It’s a nice way to save some cash since I don’t pay a fee all year and still get to see what I want. In October, for example, I subscribed to watch Salem’s Lot, Caddo Lake, and Maxxxine, so it was worth it for that alone, and then I unsubscribed and went about my day.

It feels strange to pass up such a good deal, but with how limited time I have to watch things as is, and when I do watch something I don’t want to subject myself to a bunch of ads. That’s especially the case when I’m perfectly fine with using free services like Tubi to watch some things I would’ve otherwise missed.

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Credit is due for the streamers

Streamers are making the right decisions

Not everybody has the same thoughts, but I believe streaming services have lost a lot of value in 2024 thanks to the price hikes and features being locked behind the most expensive tiers. It’s happened with Netflix, Prime Video, and Max, and it got to a point where I found it difficult to keep up with it all.

The answer for me was to drop my subscriptions to each of them and only subscribe to a specific service for a month at a time. It’s been good for me so far, but I have to admit that some of the deals offered for Black Friday and Cyber Monday had me rethinking my decision. As I mentioned, I did resubscribe to Paramount Plus, and a big reason for that was that I got the full ad-free experience with the subscription.

There was certainly a need for streamers to gain subscribers again, and these steep discounts are a good way to make that happen. I don’t know how profitable these ad tiers are for the streamers, but the continued push toward them seems to be paying off. Netflix sweetened the deal for its ad-supported tier earlier this year, and it’s a nice option for people to opt for if they have no problem sitting through a commercial break here and there.

I’m always on the hunt for a new deal, so it’s refreshing to see streamers being competitive with each other. There was a nice Fubo TV deal that offers a seven-day trial and then a $49.99 introductory month, which means I get to try out something other than YouTube TV, at least for a month.

If another deal for Max rolls around, and I’m able to find a middle ground, perhaps the ad-free 1080p tier, then I’ll reconsider my stance of going month to month with each service. I know I’ll resubscribe when House of the Dragon comes back, but that’s still a long time from now, and there’s no sense in me paying for a service I’m not particularly interested in at the moment, even if it means doing so at a discounted rate.

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