Amazon is adding commercials to Prime Video, but you can pay extra to disable them

[Shawn Knight]

Bottom line: Amazon has announced plans to introduce ads on Prime Video, a perk that comes bundled as part of a paid Prime subscription. Needless to say, folks aren't thrilled about the prospect of having to sit through ads for a service they already pay for and one that's been commercial free up to this point. There is a remedy, but it's going to cost you even more.

Amazon announced the pending change as part of a broader update on Prime Video, and said it will start showing limited advertisements beginning in early 2024. The e-commerce giant said they aim to have "meaningfully fewer" ads than rival streaming services and linear TV.

The extra revenue, Amazon added, will allow them to continue to invest in compelling content and increase their investment over a long period of time.

Prime Video ads will initially launch in the US, the UK, Canada, and Germany, with France, Italy, Spain, Mexico, and Australia to join the mix later in 2024.

Prime is priced at $14.99 per month or $139 for a full year. College students can get a subscription for $7.49 a month or $69 a year, and those on qualifying government assistance programs will pay $6.99 per month. If there's any consolation, it's that Amazon said it will not be making any changes to the current price of its Prime membership next year.

Those absolutely opposed to ads do have options. Amazon plans to introduce an ad-free option for an additional $2.99 per month, which works out to about $36 a year before any potential annual discounts are factored in. Nobody wants to pay an extra fee on top of an existing fee, but it is an option. Another would be to simply not watch anymore, but again, who wants to do that?

Amazon may be the latest to try and squeeze extra money out of consumers, but in reality they are late to the game as subscription services across the board have been hiking prices as of late.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/100254-amazon-adding-commercials-prime-video-but-you-can.html

 

[kira setsu]

Call me an ******* but why not just charge everyone a flat 14.99 a month or whatever and not add commercials.

 

[n3o127]

Call me an ******* but why not just charge everyone a flat 14.99 a month or whatever and not add commercials.

How dare you make sense... sure in some fashion this works out to more $$$ per the bean counters

 

[mgwerner]

Why not? Cable did it and not only got away with it, but attracted more customers. The whole point of cable when it went widespread in our rural area in the 1970s was to do away with ads by paying a monthly fee. For decades, that was their chief selling point. Then ads crept in, fees went up, and the whole cable industry grew fat, dumb and happy, while churning out drivel to fill the more than "13 channels of sh)t on the TV to choose from."

It was bait and switch, over 25+ years.

 

[Plutoisaplanet]

If it's only a few ads (ie. 90 seconds or less per break), that's a sweet spot for customers. Some streaming services will tend to have ad breaks of 45-60 seconds and I honestly can't complain when that short as long as I'm only paying like $6 a month for the service. And with Paramount+ you just go to cancel it every few months and accept staying subscribed for two months free, so it's more like $3/mo.

 

[EdmondRC]

Well, at least I was part of the generation that will remember how great ad-free streaming was for a while.

 

[Threadcount]

No!...go back to the Amazon Prime.

 

[Impudicus]

I've had prime about 10 years now, if they do this I cancel. The last price raise almost ended it for me, but this and the recent price raise... Well that's just pure greed, and I will not support it.

 

[Vomit]

I've had prime about 10 years now, if they do this I cancel. The last price raise almost ended it for me, but this and the recent price raise... Well that's just pure greed, and I will not support it.

Likely to do the same.

 

[Kam7r]

I have 0 ad on the internet as a whole since years, so don't care... I have prime, I would be really pissed if I had ads on something I already pay for... ( I mean I don't really pay for prime video but for the free deliveries but it's a nice bonus to have)

 

[brucek]

I used to love Amazon so much, and thought Prime was the greatest just for the free shipping, but it seems like everything is filled with caveats now. I shop on Amazon much less in general because I feel like every order has the risk of being a counterfeit. Of the items I do order, a significant portion "can not be shipped to my location" (despite other vendors doing so) making the shipping benefit less useful. I rarely look at Prime videos since I have other streaming services I prefer more, and hearing there are now ads will push it that much further down the list. Overall I'm really not sure why I still use Amazon at all, it's probably mostly inertia at this point.

 

[human7]

To be fair, Amazon Prime is pretty competitively priced when you consider all the benefits you get for the subscription. I'm sure the reason they aren't raising the price of Prime is because of the way Prime is bundled into the shopping experience and their other services.

I'm not thrilled with downgrading the quality of service (by adding ads) or forced price hikes, but this doesn't seem like a terribly egregious thing to me. What makes it distasteful is that we know the reason is because Amazon is "penny pinching" to keep its profits high - it isn't really hurting financially so it doesn't actually have to do this.

 

[RandomWAN]

This is going to drop my almost non-existent use of Amazon Prime Video to zero. I'm considering canceling my Prime all together at this point. The yearly costs are outweighing what they save me at this point.

 

[return]

Meh, I go back to downloads.

 

[RudyBob]

I don't really mind the commercials as long as they aren't with dancing pubic hairs. Think I'm kidding? They make it tough to watch the Pluto channel

 

[WhoCaresAnymore]

I don't really mind the commercials as long as they aren't with dancing pubic hairs. Think I'm kidding? They make it tough to watch the Pluto channel

I can't stand those woke'ish weird commercials. You know what I mean. I don't mind a car ad, maybe some chicks in bikini's drinking a beer. REAL chicks. lol.

 

[mgwerner]

Meh, I go back to downloads.

I never left. Terabytes of stuff I will never get to, not a commercial among them.

 

[BuckarooBonzaii]

I still shop at Amazon because they have some things I need, but sometimes it's more expensive than others. But sometimes Amazon ships faster than others. I propose that if you have Prime Subscription you should never have to pay for anything on Prime Video. It might attract more people and keep subscribers.

 

[VaRmeNsI]

Looks like it's back to torrent then.

 

[3volv3d]

Call me an ******* but why not just charge everyone a flat 14.99 a month or whatever and not add commercials.

Why not stop putting prices up to stream crap old stuff and new stuff that's even worse than the older stuff.

And advertising just should be banned world wide. People should hear things from word of mouth. People do stupid life hack videos on YouTube and reviews. Which in this day and age should be enough.
The German retailer aldi sells cheaper self branded items for less because it doesn't pay a team of money grubbing advertisers and possibly some over paid celebrity that then inflates the price of the product you once bought for 50 cents to $5.
Save energy, save money. Stop scamming your customers. Stop shrinking the quantity and quality while charging more.
And stop games makers charging full rrp for downloads that require no transport and packing material costs.
Welcome to corporate theft. The legal way to steal your money.

 

[havok585]

"Nobody wants to pay an extra fee on top of an existing fee, but it is an option. Another would be to simply not watch anymore, but again, who wants to do that?"

Someone with a brain.

 

[ArdvarkMaster]

"Those absolutely opposed to ads do have options. "

Yes, that option would be to cancel Amazon Prime.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

I've only kept prime for the grand tour and Clarkson's farm, and the occasional business use. These days thanks to Microshaft lots of old computers are being replaced instead of upgraded, so my prime isn't used nearly as often, and Clarkson's farm is ending because queen stuck up whiner lady got big mad he called her out.

I suppose I'll be cancelling my sub once it's up for renewal. It's also the only streaming platform I use, but I won't pay for ads. More Clarkson's farm, less garbage like rings of power, and your streaming platform might make money!

 

[MakeMSGreatAgain]

I already cancelled Nutflix Huhu
Dilly and Disnep… I have no problem cancelling Bezos Prime. They’ve already been doing ads for years for their own shows at the beginning of some things. They do this and I’ll cancel, simple as that. We all should vote with our wallets, that’s how a free market works and stays free. They also charged me after switching cards and kept charging me on the old card without me knowing and wouldn’t reverse the charges. It didn’t appear in my account and they couldn’t find it to stop it so I had to have my CC company block it. It happened over a year and my CC company wouldn’t fight it because I had authorized the initial charge… BS.

 

[MakeMSGreatAgain]

I agree with just about all of this except to download games it does cost them money to host the content so you can download it whenever and as often as you like. That is worth something.

Why not stop putting prices up to stream crap old stuff and new stuff that's even worse than the older stuff.

And advertising just should be banned world wide. People should hear things from word of mouth. People do stupid life hack videos on YouTube and reviews. Which in this day and age should be enough.
The German retailer aldi sells cheaper self branded items for less because it doesn't pay a team of money grubbing advertisers and possibly some over paid celebrity that then inflates the price of the product you once bought for 50 cents to $5.
Save energy, save money. Stop scamming your customers. Stop shrinking the quantity and quality while charging more.
And stop games makers charging full rrp for downloads that require no transport and packing material costs.
Welcome to corporate theft. The legal way to steal your money.