Amazon To Increase Number of Ads on Prime Video (ft.com) 59
Amazon is set to roll out a greater number of ads [non-paywalled link] across its blockbuster television shows and movies on Prime Video next year as the US tech giant steps up its push into ad-funded streaming services. Financial Times: The company said it had not seen a sharp drop in subscribers since it introduced advertising to its Prime Video platform eight months ago, allaying fears among top executives of a customer backlash, as it attempts to win over more brands to its streaming service.
Kelly Day, vice-president of Prime Video International, who oversees the streaming video business in global markets, told the Financial Times there would be an increasing number of ad slots for brands to target in 2025. Talking ahead of its first London "up front" on Wednesday evening -- when television companies present their plans to advertisers to attract money over the next year -- Day said its advertising "load" would "ramp up a little bit more into 2025."
Kelly Day, vice-president of Prime Video International, who oversees the streaming video business in global markets, told the Financial Times there would be an increasing number of ad slots for brands to target in 2025. Talking ahead of its first London "up front" on Wednesday evening -- when television companies present their plans to advertisers to attract money over the next year -- Day said its advertising "load" would "ramp up a little bit more into 2025."
I stopped using it when the ads hit (Score:5, Insightful)
But they've got to do something with the fiasco that was their Lord of The Rings show. Jesus, that thing makes Ishtar look like a blockbuster.
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I stopped using it when I realised most of the stuff i wanted to watch was rental content.
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they'd already made it basically unusable by mixing rental content into the free stuff. Adding adverts just made it extra worthless. But they've got to do something with the fiasco that was their Lord of The Rings show. Jesus, that thing makes Ishtar look like a blockbuster.
Based on our previous interactions, may I suggest you look up the Critical Drinker's take on the LotR show. That dude manages to almost make the show worth existing. He's also the only reason I finished up Game of Thrones. His takes on the last season were so spot on you almost wondered if he didn't have an eye in the writer's room.
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Re: I stopped using it when the ads hit (Score:2)
You still use amazon prime? Good grief. All you ever do is bitch and moan about corporations, the ruling class, etc. And yet you actively patronize the worst of them. Literally they're about the most anti-consumer, abusive to employees, anti-union, and whatever else I'm sure it is you hate, and yet I'd be surprised if you could manage without them.
I personally haven't had prime in years. Unless you count the occasional one-off where they give a free trial that I immediately cancel after ordering something,
I already cancelled (Score:1)
When they first started putting ads in Prime video, I cancelled Prime.
Best decision ever. Even before the ads a lot of the videos were pay to view so that was frustrating.
I've also discovered that I don't miss Prime free 2 day delivery (which was never 2 day delivery for me).
I've found that eBay has everything Amazon has and it's always cheaper with free shipping (and most of the time a lot cheaper).
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Congrats, but most people won't cancel Prime over ads. It's the free video service attached to the Prime membership they use for other reasons. If you had Prime just for video you got screwed, it was a bad deal even without ads.
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1. I had Prime which included video and "free" shipping.
2. Cancelled it.
3. Profit!
So... (Score:4, Interesting)
Are they going to reduce the cost of the Amazon Prime subscription then?
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Re: So... (Score:2)
People were paying for aol years after they stopped using dialup. IMO all non-mandatory subscriptions should be proactive opt-in.
When they announced ads were coming I cancelled my sub. I miss nothing. I love how they always claim shipping will take a week or more but Walmart is happy to deliver often same day for no subscription or delivery fees at the same price.
Subscribers (Score:5, Interesting)
They wouldn't see a sharp decrease in subscribers, rather a gradual decline as people don't renew Prime. It's not like one can quit Prime and get a pro-rated refund.
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I called support to cancel prime because I rarely used mine and got 100% refund.
Ymmv.
Yeah, I'm one of the varied-mileage peeps. The last year I had Prime Amazon kept delivering my shit to the wrong building. My calls with them were like "ok we'll fix it! okay we'll fix it! ok we'll fix it!" I gave them 3 months to make good on their promises before I finally bailed. They refused more than a month worth of refund because I was 'using their service'. I pointed out to them that I had placed more than 10 phone calls bitching about wrong address and their response was effectively "we're
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On the plus side I didn't know until Prime's shittiness that Amazon has comparatively decent competitors like Walmart.
Holy shit. We've become a world where Walmart is the "comparatively decent competitor" to someone. I still remember Walmart as the new behemoth stomping out local mom & pops as it swept across the country. I didn't care for them then, and I don't much care for them now, but I can't deny that I'm at a point where I'd rather deal with them than Amazon.
It's tough to see the trendline of society over my lifetime ever pointing downward. Could we maybe inject a little hope somewhere in the process? Doesn't ev
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We are extremely close to simply pulling our household Prime membership outright. Nevermind services like Netflix.
What's the point? You've got to spend $35 on each order for free shipping. That's about 1 order every other month, and I doubt many folks who use Amazon make fewer purchases than that.
Batch your orders. And it's not like very many things cost less than $35 anymore.
Re: Subscribers (Score:2)
Also the free shipping is ad ertised as slower than prime. But in practice, I always receive my order in the time frame advertised for prime.
So unless you use extensively the prime reorder commong good stuff which maybe saves a bit of money, I don't find prime worth it.
My son has a sequence of email adresses "suckersgivefreeprime12 at gmail.com" he used to get prime and cancel right after.
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Who signs up for PRIME for streaming service? Thats kind of an oh-by-the-way feature. The metric they should be looking at is views. Nobody’s going to ditch Prime over this. They simply wont bother to watch shit which means advertisers wont flock to pay for ads. They should be looking to see if overall viewership is down. Lately it seems that even if the 4-6 episodes these platforms want to call a ‘season’ are any good; that doesnt necessarily mean they wont fuck up season 2. Even if they
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Exactly.
The company said it had not seen a sharp drop in subscribers since it introduced advertising to its Prime Video platform eight months ago
I suspect most of those subscriptions are for the free shipping.
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Of course there isn't a drop in subscribers (Score:2)
No one is getting amazon prime for the video. Most users are not watching amazon video. I canceled prime myself because the shipping wasn't worth it. I think I've watched 2 shows on amazon prime video.
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No one is getting amazon prime for the video. Most users are not watching amazon video. I canceled prime myself because the shipping wasn't worth it. I think I've watched 2 shows on amazon prime video.
We still have prime for ordering, but I doubt we'll renew this time. I can't remember ever watching anything on prime video. Every time I've ever searched for something I want to watch, it either isn't there or it's for rental.
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My wife and I must be the odd ducks. We have Prime primarily for the video content, a little for the music content, and the shipping is a bonus. We generally find more of interest to watch on Prime than on Netflix.
That said, the next time our Prime subscription is up it's going to be that much harder to let it renew. If I wanted ad-supported streaming there's plenty of other options to consider.
"the coming onslaught" (Score:2)
From the TF(Engadget)A:
Kelly Day, vice-president of Prime Video International, told Financial Times that the platform launched with “a very light load” of ads at first, so as to prepare consumers for the coming onslaught. She said the initial rollout was a deliberate “gentle entry into advertising.”
Not really I phrase I like to hear wrt ads ...
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It's already a lie anyway. The current commercial situation is the most jarring bullshit I've seen in a long time. It just picks a random place in what you are watching, then switches over to a set of commercials. It can be in the middle of character dialog, during the "twist" reveal of a thriller, or a empathetic heartbreaking moment and BOOM, 3 back to back commercials about prescription drugs and gambling sites/apps
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This seems like an actual useful case for AI, to figure out where the scene changes are and mark them for semi-sane ad insertion. (Not that I care, I don't have time to watch streaming shows, and Sturgeon's Law anyhow.)
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This seems like an actual useful case for AI, to figure out where the scene changes are and mark them for semi-sane ad insertion.
There's sometimes (usually? often?) a fade between scenes, at least in shows originally intended for network TV. If I remember correctly, there's a story in the Firefly DVD commentary about Fox using fade-to-black to automatically trigger a commercial break, so Joss Whedon couldn't use that for transitions and instead could only "fade to suede". Someone mentioned this here [reddit.com] ...
Re: "the coming onslaught" (Score:2)
I mean yes, AI can probably do that.
But it only takes a few moments while watching the episode for the production team to indicate where ads would be appropriate.
Yay...? (No, not really) (Score:2)
From the TF(Engadget)A:
The company is also readying an interactive ad experience that will allow Prime Video watchers to add an item to their cart straight from the video stream. This will work with physical remotes and on the app.
Seriously, anyone asking for this?
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Seriously, anyone asking for this?
Yes.
Not the subscribers, but the vendors. Especially the crappy Chinese crap merchants who are worse than the average TEMU brand
Alternate headline (Score:5, Funny)
Torrent Stes to See Increase in Number of Visitors.
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Torrent Stes to See Increase in Number of Visitors.
Why not both?
Paying for a streaming service then pirating their content is ideal. You have the moral high-ground that you aren't stealing content you don't legitimately have access to, and you don't have to do the work of skipping the ads for products you won't purchase. While it isn't legal, it's just.
I will not watch ads (Score:3)
I will pay if it's something I really want, otherwise I'll use an ad blocker. If that doesn't work, I'll stay away
Ads suck
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When I watch tv on the computer, uBlock does a fine job of killing commercials, but when I relax and TRY to watch tv via streaming/Roku stick, I'm inundated by ENDLESS drug, and other bullshit scams and lately endless political ads, some back-to-back, ALL for the candidate I WILL NOT be voting for.. My mute button gets a BIG workout....
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Here is where I dont mind ads.. shows that were deliberately written around ads to begin with. So long as the ads are still inserted at the marked locations. The story has a scripted pause or break with a transition. The worst are the YouTube ads that cut shit off mid sentence and mid thought. I only use YouTube for information. Even if that information is a walkthrough tour of a place I am interested in. Its completely useless for entertainment.
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Here is where I dont mind ads.. shows that were deliberately written around ads to begin with. So long as the ads are still inserted at the marked locations. The story has a scripted pause or break with a transition. The worst are the YouTube ads that cut shit off mid sentence and mid thought. I only use YouTube for information. Even if that information is a walkthrough tour of a place I am interested in. Its completely useless for entertainment.
The thing that kills me is shit like what HULU pulls. There are planned commercial breaks in the shows we watch on HULU. But HULU's algorithm inserts the commercial a second or so before the planned break, so that little gotchya bit of dialog or joke punchline, or big action moment that's meant to be a cliffhanger gets cut right off. Then it returns right as that moment completes, the screen goes black, there's a brief pause where the commercials should have gone, and the show returns. WTF? They literally p
Enshittification (Score:2)
Yeah..Nah (Score:2)
Even though I have been give other 6 months free, I have not bothered, and the rest of the offerings are meh, just old ideas rehashed, nothing interesting.
I watch ZERO ad supported TV, have ad blockers, tracker blockers etc on my computers
Much prefer to read a book, or spend time doing hobbies.
They already ruined Fire TV (Score:2)
Since the RPi 4 on wards they have made for a great replacement so I have bee
This was obvious from the start (Score:2)
This was obvious from the start. They (just like Disney and Netflix) wanted to get into ad infested streaming, so of course they increase the number of ads and the price of the service gently. They have all the data and know when people stop watching or quit. They might even try to find each household's ad endurance limit, For me, I'm not playing that game. I'll rahter have one ad free service that costs more than all of them with ads.
What ads? Ublock still works well (Score:3)
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PFBlockerNG on my PFSense firewall also works for me, I haven't seen an ad in Prime since they announced it so I assume PiHole and similar setups also work against it.
It's Something Else (Score:2)
Prime is the only video site I've seen that flatly refuses to work with a whole-house VPN.
Imagine letting random IoT devices use your actual IP?
Anyway they are doing some kind of surveillance where knowing your address is important. Which is weird because they probably have that for packages.
They're doing something else besides just enticing people with video.
Time to ditch it (Score:2)
Has an executive EVER said (Score:2)
..."hey, let's reduce ads!"
the problem is not the ads (Score:2)
after all, in a normal 30 min show there are ~24 min of content and ~6 min of ads. Ditto for a 60 min show ~15 min of ads
the problem is that, as other commenters have said, when looking for content, amazon makes it extremely difficult to distinguish free with freevee, free with prime, for rent and for buy content...
This leads to NASTY surprises, if one does not excersice extreme care, and I do not want to navegate a minefield each time I want to watch something.
Everytime I get a one month free trial of prim
Don't care (Score:2)
I technically pay for prime (for the shipping not the video) and if there's anything on there I want to watch I'll just grab it from a torrent and upload it to my Jellyfin server.
Streaming had a good run where it was more convenient than piracy and worth the price for about 10 years there but they've gone and ruined it again.
Prime Subscriber but (Score:1)
Testing the Waters (Score:2)
Amazon is simply seeing how far it can go with Ad's before folks either:
1) Give in and elect to pay $3 / month ( extra ) to remain ad-free
or
2) Cancel their Prime subscriptions
Somewhere between #1 and #2 is a very fine line. Amazon is trying to
figure out where that line is in order to maximize the money they get from
everyone who utilizes Prime.