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Television

Amazon Prime Video Will Start Showing Ads on January 29 (theverge.com) 227

Posted by msmash from the coming-to-your-TV-next-month dept.
Amazon earlier this year announced plans to start incorporating ads into movies and TV shows streamed from its Prime Video service, and now the company has revealed a specific date when you'll start seeing them: it's January 29th. From a report: "This will allow us to continue investing in compelling content and keep increasing that investment over a long period of time," the company said in an email to customers about the pending shift to "limited advertisements."

"We aim to have meaningfully fewer ads than linear TV and other streaming TV providers. No action is required from you, and there is no change to the current price of your Prime membership," the company wrote. Customers have the option of paying an additional $2.99 per month to keep avoiding advertisements.
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Amazon Prime Video Will Start Showing Ads on January 29 More

Amazon Prime Video Will Start Showing Ads on January 29

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  • Downward Spiral (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Thelasko ( 1196535 ) on Tuesday December 26, 2023 @07:04PM (#64107643) Journal
    I saw the writing on the wall a year ago. Amazon's services keep getting worse, and the prices keep going up. This trend will continue until they start seeing decreasing enrollment in Prime. That's why I got out a few months back.

    • Re:Downward Spiral (Score:5, Informative)

      by Smidge204 ( 605297 ) on Tuesday December 26, 2023 @07:20PM (#64107683) Journal

      Years ago? How about DECADES ago?

      Remember when Cable TV offered an ad-free television viewing experience, for a monthly subscription fee?

      Then the premium channels that you had to pay extra for on top of your monthly cable bill, in order to get an ad-free television viewing experience, because "regular" cable TV started showing ads?

      Oops those show ads now too.

      Same shit different decade.
      =Smidge=

      • and don't forget the ads you might not notice, like product placements. In the olden days, outright show sponsorships were common though not so much now.

        • I remember seeing some old Ozzie and Harriet episodes on PBS where they left the old sponsorship bits in. The show would open with an announcement along the lines of "Proudly Sponsored by Bisquick", followed by a short clip where Harriet was cooking pancakes with the sponsored stuff and the boys were eating them, talking about how delicious they were. I think there was another one, sponsored by Coca-Cola, where they were all shown drinking from the classic glass bottles while the announcer gave a spiel.

          Curr

        • Blink and You'll Miss It (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Kunedog ( 1033226 ) on Tuesday December 26, 2023 @11:22PM (#64108223)

          and don't forget the ads you might not notice, like product placements.

          Any who hasn't watched network TV in a while, no matter how jaded, may be shocked at how bad it really got:
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

      • Bingo. The whole premise of cable was no ads. That was a bullshit promise and the same goes for streaming. You are paying to see ads now.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by mjwx ( 966435 )

        Years ago? How about DECADES ago?

        Remember when Cable TV offered an ad-free television viewing experience, for a monthly subscription fee?

        Then the premium channels that you had to pay extra for on top of your monthly cable bill, in order to get an ad-free television viewing experience, because "regular" cable TV started showing ads?

        Oops those show ads now too.

        Same shit different decade.
        =Smidge=

        I think the prediction was that streaming services will become like cable TV (Pay TV in the ROTW). I personally predicted the balkanisation of streaming back in 2015 when it was really just Netflix and Amazon was a rank amateur. Now we've got Disney, Apple, Paramount and HBO with their own services as well and they're just the big ones. People are already cord cutting (in my case, in the UK, going back to piracy) due to higher prices and lower value for money. The next step is for another company to bundle

    • yeah, we're gonna cancel over this for sure, avast me hearties...

    • Amazon video is mostly crap anyway. If I can't ad block what little I watch, I'll find using another source.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by CAIMLAS ( 41445 )

      I've got friends who've canceled Prime simply because the whole experience was horrible: they'd get the wrong packages, returns were horrible, things were stolen by the Amazon delivery driver/simply not delivered (as confirmed by security cameras). Nevermind the quality of the software services is increasingly not worth the squeeze.

    • Re:Downward Spiral (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ravenshrike ( 808508 ) on Wednesday December 27, 2023 @03:55AM (#64108487)

      It doesn't help that they set 3/4 of a billion dollars on fire with Rings of Power.

  • Pause and out (Score:3)

    by kwerle ( 39371 ) <kurt@CircleW.org> on Tuesday December 26, 2023 @07:09PM (#64107653) Homepage Journal

    i put my subscription on pause (means don't auto-renew) and won't be renewing. I hope they get the message.

    Frankly, I don't get it. Why would not not do N-tier pricing where the top tier has no ads. It's not like that's hard to do. I guess they just think more folks will put up with 'ads for all' than not.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kwerle ( 39371 )

      Oops - it IS tiered. Still think I'm gonna cancel.

      • I will probably pay the extra fee. Prime has been decent value so far, I watch both Prime shows and Twitch streams. As long as they don't "alter the deal any further". I will pay to avoid ads... up to a point. Beyond that point, I morally don't feel much bothered about piracy.
        • This. I prefer to pay. But at some point I feel that I am being taken advantage of and the abuser that put me in the situation no longer deserves my support.

    • Yep, same here. I donâ(TM)t but enough from them to make it worthwhile for shipping, and Iâ(TM)ve decided that Plex is a better experience.

    • You inspired me to do the same. However, you cannot on Firefox. Even spoofing the user agent identification doesn't work - you just get a broken page. This should say a lot about the current state of things.

      So yeah, i fired up Chromium just to put the pause on. Time to see if I can get my shit from Walmart and Target instead.

  • Shiver me timbers! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by RitchCraft ( 6454710 ) on Tuesday December 26, 2023 @07:11PM (#64107659)

    It appears that setting sail for the high seas is about to get a boost in recruitment. Streaming was supposed to end this. The enshitification continues.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      I've found that I have a very low tolerance for ads these days. Now that I don't watch linear TV, and blocks all ads online and on services like YouTube, I just can't stand them.

      So this is a deal breaker for me. I was going to subscribe again when the new series of The Boys was out, but I think I'll just pirate it instead. I have a Greasemonkey script that adds links in the TV Calendar site to a couple of torrent sites (1337x.to and The Pirate Bay) so that is easy to grab the latest episode.

      Prime "free' nex

  • So this is really a price increase. (Score:3)

    by Fly Swatter ( 30498 ) on Tuesday December 26, 2023 @07:15PM (#64107673) Homepage
    $2.99 more per month, or you get to see the ads; the next price increase will be both pay more and no option to remove ads, just like cable...

    • So don't renew. As long as they don't change the terms in the middle of your contracted period, it's fine.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bn-7bc ( 909819 )
      Ok I might be slow or something, but this focus on cable is a bit odd to me, cable is AFIK a means of distributing signals (ie tv channels) unless the cable companies allso have their own in hose tv channels do the they have any control over wether ads are shown or not, isn't that up to the channels ( much as astra dies not control wherher ads arecshown on the channels broadcasted over their sats)?
      • The original promise of cable was advertisement free shows. Not that there wasn't advertisements between shows but that you could watch an entire show without interruption.

    • It's a price increase, but they're increasing the price of something you already paid for. It's not like they're waiting until your subscription comes up for renewal. No, they're taking the subscription you paid for and making it worse, then saying you have to pay even more if you want to get what you already paid for.

      It's the second time they've done this, first with Prime Music and now with Prime Video. You buy a subscription, then they take away something you already paid for and demand more money if

  • Why not? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Tuesday December 26, 2023 @07:19PM (#64107679)

    No action is required from you, and there is no change to the current price of your Prime membership

    When people signed up there were no ads. They were paying for the service. Now there are ads which are helping to pay for the service so the price should go down. If you don't want ads you should pay more.

    With luck, the number of subscribers will plummet. People need to send a message.

    • Re:Why not? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Petersko ( 564140 ) on Tuesday December 26, 2023 @07:32PM (#64107715)

      "Now there are ads which are helping to pay for the service so the price should go down."

      While that might fulfill an internal desire of yours, it's not the way business runs. Setting your price so that your desired profit is a fixed quantity and the price to the consumer floats accordingly is far too simplistic.

      My first question is whether or not prime video is profitable for Amazon. Given that it's provided for free to prime members (a side effect, and the only reason I have it), it's quite possible that it isn't. And the ads might close the gap on the value proposition.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        More likely they simply did some market research and realized, like cable did, that they can charge a subscription and have ads and make even more money. The number of people who cancel won't be enough to offset the extra profit from the ads.

    • What will happen is that they'll see a drop in revenue. I already don't find much on Prime I want to watch. I get my money's worth on their shipping subscription but only barely. What little I did watch, I won't be watching with ads and it definitely won't get me to pay $36 a year to watch 2-3 hours of content a year.

    • Subscriptions won't plummet because the streaming is bundled with the free next day shipping ploy.

    • When people signed up there were no ads.

      When I signed up they didn't offer movie streaming (or music) at all. But complaining about something being taken away which was originally added at no additional cost is the very definition of entitled.

  • And I'm out. I'll remove prime streaming before I see an ad. Seems a little bait and switch, the point of BUYING the streaming in the first place was to get rid of the ads.

  • They have us over the barrel. We cannot win, not with the near monopolies of Google Chrome, Google Ads, and Amazon everything.

    When they decide to not let ad blockers work anymore, I'm just gonna pay the $3 more a month and hope they do not alter the deal further.

    • You have many options. You can win. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Brain-Fu ( 1274756 ) on Tuesday December 26, 2023 @08:10PM (#64107811) Homepage Journal

      They do not have us "over the barrel." Not even remotely.

      We can simply: not watch. Nothing bad will happen! It's not like you will starve to death. Or die of social isolation. Or atrophy.

      Quite to the contrary, you will have MORE time available to socialize, read, invest in hobbies, exercise, or whatever you want!

      AND you can STILL watch movies, perfectly legally and without spending a dime, by borrowing them from your local library! Seriously, your library is part of a network that collectively has all the hits on DVD or blu-ray, including all the hit TV series as well. The only thing they don't have are the streaming service exclusives. If you, for some reason, simply cannot live without those exclusives, you can subscribe for one month each year and binge watch them. Done.

      You win.

      • Boring. I am disabled and have lived in my bed for nearly 10 years. Socializing is not a thing. I am desperate for entertainment.

        • In that case, you have my sympathies.

          Why is socializing not a thing? Technically you are socializing right now, here on slashdot. Though this really isn't the best forum for friendly dialogue.

          Since you clearly have Internet access, you might be interested in the large selection of social video games available.

          If you can sit up and move your arms, something like the Meta Quest 3 headset can give some quite awesome virtual experiences, again including some that are social and give you a place to meet new fr

      • you will have MORE time available to ... read...

        And you'll finish reading those books every couple of days and need to quickly receive new ones. So you'll add Amazon Prime for 2-day delivery. Oh wait...

    • Buy an anonymous VPN for pennies per month, set up a Raspberry Pi with jackett, sonarr, radarr, transmission.. connect Pi to VPN and then you get to pay less than you do now per month to have access to the same plus some more, all ad-free.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by bn-7bc ( 909819 )
        Yes becouse when a majorety does that streaminsevices wil dropp ads and prices no they will gouge their remaing users even more and creaye even less new content, and much less in house content will get baugh because they can't afford it, would you kindly stop recomending that people steal

      • That's an arms race, a constant struggle us oldies just can't keep up with. Sorry, but it's not worth $3 a month.

  • Does anyone know if this will this also apply to purchased content? I'd be mightily annoyed if it did.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      And once again, pirated stuff gets even better in comparison. Well. Obviously a progressive market failure at work.

    • Does anyone know if this will this also apply to purchased content? I'd be mightily annoyed if it did.

      I seriously doubt it, but if that were the case, try to move as much amazon purcharsed stuff as possible to MovieAnywhere, https://moviesanywhere.com/wel... [moviesanywhere.com] that way, at least for the content you are able to move, you can use other services to watch it, ad-free

      • The problem with Movies Anywhere is it will probably go the way of UltraViolet [wikipedia.org] at some point - taking your purchased digital content with it.

        And, with the balkanization of streaming services - and the never-ending price increases - I'm now finding it cheaper to just buy disks again, at least for some shows I want to watch (especially if it's likely I'll watch them more than once).

        If disks go away completely, I'll probably take to the High Seas.

    • To be honest you didn’t purchase anything. Are the files on your computer or Amazon’s? Amazon could revoke your purchase at any time.

  • " No action is required from you, and there is no change to the current price of your Prime membership" I expected to have to pay MORE to have ads.

    • see that's where they're wrong, injecting bullshit, cunty ads into a service i'm paying for? yes there is absolutely action required.

      cancellation.

  • I am buy so little these days but I kept Amazon Prime in case there might be something streaming I wanted to watch.

  • Ads? For Free? (Score:4, Funny)

    by CoolDiscoRex ( 5227177 ) on Tuesday December 26, 2023 @07:39PM (#64107743) Homepage

    there is no change to the current price of your Prime membership

    OMG, they are going to give us the ads at no additional charge? How can they afford to do that? That is awesome!

    Christmas came twice this year!

  • I guess that takes away a little from the value of prime. Not that I got it for their crap video service, but will be using it even less with this change.
  • I have an Amazon Prime account because I buy a lot of stuff online. Free shipping, especially for cheap items - stuff you would never order online if you had to pay for shipping - is highly useful.

    I still download even the stuff I get for free on Prime Video (and Music) and consume it that way instead. Guess I future-proofed myself with that plan.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jvkjvk ( 102057 )

      It's not really free shipping, though. The cost of shipping is simply baked into the overall cost. You can get all that stuff elsewhere cheaper, including shipping costs...

      • I'd never pay the real cost of 2 day shipping on a $5 or $10 item. In many cases the shipping would cost more than the item itself. If they can bake that in then good on them.

  • Gotta have that fantasy fix. It's amazing we take pride in this addiction and yet frown on others. Pony up, emotional slaves.

  • Accessibility fail (Score:3)

    by Peterus7 ( 607982 ) on Tuesday December 26, 2023 @08:49PM (#64107917) Homepage Journal
    Ads are a living hell for people with sensory issues going on. They're often way too loud, absolutely jarring, and unskippable. Really hard when you're watching the show you use to get regulated after a bad day, and suddenly it's disrupted by something unexpected, loud, and unavoidable. It was bad enough that Youtube did this shit, but I was worried others would follow suit, demanding people with sensory disabilities pay more just to use their products safely.

  • In my experience trying to resume a program with ads, or even just fast-forwarding doesn't work well or at all.

    Service should deliver ads based on how many you have recently seen on that service and not simply how many ads you have seen since initiating a stream of that particular program.

  • Prime Video has spent huge amounts (Score:5, Interesting)

    by blahbooboo ( 839709 ) on Tuesday December 26, 2023 @09:20PM (#64107975)
    This is partly due to a lot of very expensive shows Amazon video has purchased. The mediocre LOTR rings of power cost them billions and has gotten mediocre at best reception. Thus the new fee to see their limited and expensive content with ads... https://screenrant.com/lotr-ri... [screenrant.com]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      LOTR has a budget of half a billion over 5 seasons..I wonder if the next season will be more like Game of Thrones, with more violence and nudity. I gave up on LOTR after a few episodes, and can't remember much about it, other than it was bland and uninteresting.

  • Translation (Score:4, Insightful)

    by viperidaenz ( 2515578 ) on Tuesday December 26, 2023 @09:26PM (#64107995)

    "Our userbase is now large enough and we have enough exclusive content to being the process of maximum value extraction from the platform"
    Like how Facebook started off as ad-free, to gain acceptance and market share.

  • What study said $3 is the price point to lose the least amount of customers? Apple TV goes up $3 this month, then Amazon next month. I assume some high price consumer study determined this pain point.

  • "We aim to have meaningfully fewer ads than linear TV and other streaming TV providers. No action is required from you, and there is no change to the current price of your Prime membership..."

    Translation into English from BizSpeak: "We have decided to decrease the value of the service we provide and increase our revenue at your expense. We have also inserted the camel's nose well into the tent. You won't see a lot of ads right now, and we've told the advertisers to keep a low profile. You can bet your a

  • With ads now I have to get up and move around, go to the bathroom, etc.

  • Amazon's about to loose me. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by bjwest ( 14070 ) on Wednesday December 27, 2023 @12:13AM (#64108271)
    I joined Prime due to the free two-day shipping years ago. They've since done away with the two-day part of that, but I was OK with that with free Prime video. I've also signed up for Walmart+, and I'm finding myself purchasing more and more from them anyway, so If Amazon start showing me adds, I may just end my Prime subscription.

  • I'm not paying for the service to watch ads. I'm not paying "just 2.99/month more" to watch it without ads either. That's a hard pass from me. Time to reevaluate if I even need prime for my deliveries.

  • Oh well (Score:3)

    by stevenm86 ( 780116 ) on Wednesday December 27, 2023 @01:31AM (#64108327)
    I pay for Amazon Prime but I almost always pirate the shows available to me, simply because the amazon Roku player is pure unadulterated garbage. You'll have a much more responsive experience if you download the content elsewhere, and watch it using a player app that's actually works. Now there's just one more reason to do this.

  • Shooting yourself in the foot only hurts for awhile. After you cut the foot off entirely it stops hurting.

    Over time, all monopolies become abusive.

  • I will definitely pay extra to ad-free (Score:3)

    by mamba-mamba ( 445365 ) on Wednesday December 27, 2023 @04:09AM (#64108493)

    I like unlimited streaming and ad-free. I don't like to pay per episode or per series. That never seems worth it. Any movie or video that is not available on an ad-free streaming service, well, I just won't watch it. I am perfectly willing to pay more (to a point) to get ad free.

    As an example, I have not watched anything on freevee because there is no ad-free tier. But Hulu will let you get ad free if you pay extra.

    I guess my MO will be that if there is something I want to watch on prime, I will activate the ad-free experience until I am finished watching it. Then I will de-activate it. I sure hope they make it easy to start and stop!

  • Thank God (Score:4, Funny)

    by GeekWithAKnife ( 2717871 ) on Wednesday December 27, 2023 @05:04AM (#64108533)
    Despite having paid for Netflix, Prime and the occasional other service I still watched downloaded content off the internet for years because it's less hassle and has no ads. Every so often I would dip into the streaming services I was paying for because the experience became easier, better and more content I wanted was available so there was a reason for me to use Amazon Prime Video...but over time I became concerned that I am paying for Prime and getting all this "free" stuff without being funnelled like livestock into a narrow pathway to have my eyelids taped open to watch those quality ads I so wanted...but now that they're adding in the ads I can rest my conscience. This is nothing short of a Christmas miracle. Thank god, his son the baby jesus and of course Jeff Bezos that so uncompromisingly held the customer at the heart of it all. Happy new, Prime free, year to all.

  • I want a video-less (cheaper) Amazon Prime sub! (Score:3)

    by rklrkl ( 554527 ) on Wednesday December 27, 2023 @04:58PM (#64110403) Homepage

    What I actually want is an Amazon Prime subscription *without* Amazon Prime Video included, which seems to be the only Prime sub combo Amazon don't offer! I already "obtain" Prime Video content from elsewhere despite having a full Prime sub (and with ads about to kick in, so will many others I suspect) and really want Prime for the delivery service, not the streaming service.

    A video-less Amazon Prime service should cost less than one with video (albeit the difference would likely to be less than the cost of buying just the Prime Video service on its own).

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