Amazon Prime: you'll soon have to pay more if you don't want ads in Prime Video
It was only a matter of time before the next major streaming service starts to introduce advertising. This time, it is Amazon Prime, or more precisely Amazon Prime Video, which is getting a dose of advertising.
Amazon Prime users who use Prime Video will soon see advertisement when they use the service. Amazon claims that it plans to show "meaningfully fewer ads" than rival streaming platforms, but did not provide specifics.
Prime users who don't want to see ads have to pay an additional $2.99 per month to do so.
In "An update on Prime Video", Amazon explains that "limited advertisements" will be shown starting in early 2024. Ads in Prime Video content will be introduced in select regions only in 2024. The first wave will hit Amazon customers in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Germany. Later on in the year, ads will be a common occurrence for users in France, Italy, Spain, Mexico and Australia.
No information has been provided on other regions. Amazon notes that "no action is required for Prime members", unless they want to keep an ad-free Prime experience. In this case, they need to add the new ad-free option to their account, which will cost $2.99 per month in the United States. Amazon said that it will reveal local pricing for other countries at a later point.
Prime video members will be emailed in advance to inform them about the introduction of ads to the service. The emails will contain information on the new ad-free option and how to sign-up for it.
Amazon customers in the United States pay $14.99 per month or $139 per year for the service. It includes Prime Video access, but also other benefits, such as free deliveries of items purchased on Amazon, Prime Gaming and Reading, and more.
Customers who subscribe to the ad-free option pay $35.88 per year extra for that. It is unknown if Amazon will give discounts if customers make yearly payments.
Amazon did not provide specifics on the integration of advertisement. It is unclear when ads will be shown to users and whether these ads will also be shown while shows or movies are playing.
Both Disney and Netflix have also introduced ad-powered plans on their service. Disney+ is available for $13.99 per month without ads in the United States from October onward. The price of a Disney+ subscription with ads is $7.99.
Netflix customers pay $15.49 per month for the Standard plan in the united States, or $6.99 per month for Standard with ads.
Amazon explains that it needs to introduce advertising to "continue investing in compelling content and keep increasing the investment over a long period of time".
Closing Words
It feels disingenuous to introduce ads in the way Amazon is doing it. Amazon, in effect, is increasing the price of its service, if customers want to keep the same experience as they currently have.
Now You: are you a subscriber? What will you do?
Another example this reminds me of is “Firefox Better Web with Scroll”. A common paywall for several news site with an explicit promise that it would replace privacy invasions, with a privacy policy that actually included an awful lot more of tracking than before…
“Prime users who don’t want to see ads have to pay an additional $2.99 per month to do so.”
As predicted, the idea that paywalls are a solution to ad surveillance was a lie. Once we got used to the idea of paying for access, nothing prevented them from still spying and brainwashing us. So resist paywalls as much as possible, independently of their other drawbacks of putting the web behind a wall for the happy few, they are only a way for them to abusively rise their prices (in cash+data). And see as complicit initiatives such as Mozilla absolutely wanting to record credit card numbers in the browser to autofill on random sites (without even starting to discuss the associated security risks).
It reminds me of the situation with web cryptocurrency miners, or other resource abuse on the web such as bandwidth theft, which were sometimes sold as an alternative to the ad industry to support site costs. The question is, if those had become unavoidable in case we had not killed them in the egg, what would have prevented web sites from using them forcefully and still doing ads and tracking in addition ?
And see as complicit initiatives such as Brave, Opera, Chrome, Mozilla absolutely wanting to record credit card numbers in the browser to autofill on random sites (without even starting to discuss the associated security risks).
Fixed it for you.
Why do my comments keep being censored?
“Mozilla absolutely wanting to record credit card numbers in the browser to autofill on random sites”
Not sure why you are singling out Mozilla, Brave, Opera, Edge all have the same credit card functionality as Firefox.
I have to keep my Prime membership because it saves me a TON on shipping. But thats it. The video service isnt that great to begin with. Most of my video entertainment comes from “other sources” and is always commercial free. I have gotten so spoiled not having to watch commercials that, when I watch the local news, which is the only thing I watch that still has commercials.. It infuriates me. The sheer amount of time people have to wast watching commercials boggles the mind. It would be different if commercial were few and far between and short.. Like under a minute. But they aren’t. Roughly 35% of TV watching time for most people is wasted on commercials. Screw em!
Several problems for Amazon come to mind:
A: Prime video is just that service included with a prime membership. It’s sub par at best. Nobody joins just to use it.
B: Prime membership itself just went up making it less valuable unless you buy a lot of items. The items are themselves mainly overpriced anyway making paying more for a sub par video service look pretty unattractive.
C: The available content on prime is mainly filler junk with the occasional good show. A lot of the available content also has a second season that is paywalled or may have been “available in your location” previously but is suddenly not.
D: A lot of the good content is pay to view anyway.
E: Prime is not worth paying extra to not view ads.
Amazon are just greedy.
I *did* get Prime primarily for the [certain] videos. The free shipping was nice but there are other ways to get that.
I just canceled my Prime subscription. If I’m going to pay extra for commercial free, then they need to make all the freevee material ad free as well. Then I would pay it.
This doesn’t affect me. Even though I have Amazon Prime, I usually download all my shows using file sharing software. Most of these torrent shows are commercial free, especially if you choose the right up-loader for the source. I also cancelled Netflix and use this method because they won’t let me watch shows using a VPN.
Coming soon to all streaming services. Walk the plank! These companies can shove it!
It is simpler for me to pay $30 a year and get anything I wanted on a backbone. Locally stored, archived, playable on any device, shareable with anybody, no geo-blocking, pixelation, choppy streaming, DRM, accounts, or bloated web players.
Amazon Prime Video–consider it a failure. Nearly all content that is somewhat decent is now shown on Freevee–forget a good selection of foreign titles; any orders made take at least one week for delivery–two days is ancient history. And online prices are incredibly expensive if one commits to a little comparison shopping.
When I canceled my subscription, the gal asked why. “Because find it less expensive and more reliable to go with Netflix (ad free) and Walmart.” Walmart shipping is phenomenal–sometimes one day. Returns are simple–no charge. And Netflix provides the highest quality content–for the moment.
Amazon must be desperate for dollars to pull a stunt like “pay me {Jeff} more.” Why would I pay you more. The competition is so much better and less expensive.
It was only a matter of time. Money controls everything.
Dont they make enough money from selling the data that they acquire?
With all the free streaming options, why pay for ads?