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Amazon Prime Video content to start including ads next year
- dzonga 3y agopirate - download content. play it off a usb / hard-drive. offline. win. or buy blueray disk. either ways that's a win.
- raldi 3y agoMods, I suggest a title change to something like, “Ads coming to Prime Video”
- verandaguy 3y agoEditorializing titles is generally frowned upon on HN, even if your suggestion is accurate
- BugsJustFindMe 3y agoThat's true, but in this case I would argue that the title "An Update On" is itself aggressively editorialized into fake bland neutrality. Correcting that is very different than the normal prohibition on title changes.
- verandaguy 3y agoI don’t make the rules, but i do think it’s funny how “an update on” has taken on a bit of a life of its own. For example when Google says it, they’re probably killing off a service.
- tech234a 3y agoYeah that's part of the reason I left the title as-is when I submitted the article
- yffi_bit 3y agoThis is equivalent to shrinkflation: pay the same, get less. Streaming platforms want to retain most users, but also extract more value from them. Slowly a new threshold for what's "normal" is set, and perhaps then -more- adds can be added. There's no need to speculate where things go from there. Just look at where cable TV is.
- brunoqc 3y agoenshittification?
- dudefeliciano 3y agothis was also my first thought after watching the DEF CON talk: An Audacious Plan to Halt the Internet's Ensh*ttification[1] 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rimtaSgGz_4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rimtaSgGz_4
- IshKebab 3y agoSuch a cringeworthy word though.
- jfghi 3y agoI like the term because it strikes the appropriate nerve for the behaviors it accurately describes.
- fidotron 3y agoMaybe it's me, but this word seems overused to the point that it ends up destroying discussion. That said, in this case it's relevant.
- pradn 3y agoLet's coin a new term for this, "adflation".
- hef19898 3y ago
- julieturner99 3y agowon’t watch it with ads. can’t imagine handing over more cash than i already do to amazon. so, guess i’ll just have to focus on the other many channels i subscribe to.
- kar1181 3y agoMore pertinently than that, it's a quick win for a kids show, ads when young kids are involved increase friction so much it's not worth it.
- passwordoops 3y agoSo we all cut the cord to get away from restrictive, over-priced packages riddled with ads so we can end up with restrictive, over-priced packages riddled with ads. Say hello to the new boss, I guess
- mumblemumble 3y agoMy public library has thousands of DVD. More than I could watch in a lifetime, I think. There's even a bit of streaming. And, outside of the Disney stuff, none of it has ads I can't skip. All free. I mention this and someone always complains that that Game of Mad Men is Breaking the New Black isn't at the library. Which gets me thinking that the real boss might be our own consumerism.
- passwordoops 3y agoI'm not complaining. My kid loves it - the library has titles that are difficult to find or not in my streaming service du jour, plus she gets exposed to just plain discovery by browsing. Something targeted, personalized suggestions have taken away from us
- hotpotamus 3y agoI can't imagine the idea of a public library being proposed in modern times. I'm glad that my local system is there and they seem very dedicated to serving the public.
- danaris 3y agoI am absolutely and wholeheartedly in favor of public libraries. They're fantastic places, and deserve and need much more support than they've got. But the idea that just because some crappy knock-offs and overdone franchises exist, every piece of entertainment media is just interchangeable with every other one, and no one should ever be upset that they can't easily access the specific piece of media they want to see, is just absurd on the face of it.
- diyftw 3y agoPeople who "cut the cord" yet signed up for the various alternatives didn't really cut anything. They just plugged their cord into a different hole.
- swader999 3y agoTime to write a 'VCR' for Prime lol.
- XorNot 3y agoIt strikes me that auto-stripping ads after DVRing the shows should be a pretty simple AI problem these days.
- isykt 3y agoThis reminds me that the Alamo Drafthouse used to have a program called “TV at the Alamo” and it was brilliant. It was $5 to reserve a seat, and that $5 went towards food and drink purchases. They would show the previous week’s episode while the current episode was airing, strip out the ads and then project the current week’s episode. I watched Mad Men and Breaking Bad this way.
- bluescrn 3y agoGiven how ads tend to be louder than the content, you could probably detect it based on the average audio level without any fancy AI
- readthenotes1 3y agoThat's supposed to be illegal now in the US.
- flanked-evergl 3y agoI can barely find something to watch on Prime which is why I only subscribe like 1 month a year, and for that month I spend maybe 8 total hours watching. Maybe if Amazon made better content, then they could get more revenue.
- usefulcat 3y agoThe Expanse was excellent, IMO. Apart from that I mostly agree. I've tried Jack Ryan and Wheel of Time, which were good but not amazing.
- rerx 3y agoThe Marvelous Mrs. Maisel was fabulous. They had lot of good shows in the prestige comedy or dramedy (is that still a thing?) genre. Transparent, Red Oaks, Mozart in the Jungle, Fleabag (bought from BBC)
- humanlion87 3y ago+1 to Expanse, one of the best sci-fi shows in recent times. I also saw saw Reacher and felt that it was good.
- 4RealFreedom 3y agoI agree there isn't a lot of good content on Prime. Expanse was excellent (even though they rushed the last season) and The Boys is really good.
- throwaway2203 3y agoI found Wheel of Time to be terrible. Great spectacle, but trash acting (outside of the MC) and worse writing.
- mindslight 3y agoDoes Amazon really deserve credit for The Expanse? The first three seasons were SyFy, the next two were Amazon and notably less good (but still good), and then with Alex and the whole sixth season they basically took it out back and shot it for the fuck of it. I'm not saying that if they made a seventh season as a musical where the characters were furries with the effects from Cats I wouldn't still lap it up. But it feels like something Amazon bought into to milk rather than having created it.
- hprotagonist 3y ago1983: “pay for cable and it’ll be ad free!” 2023: “hey charlie brown, …”
- nblavoie 3y agoAnd those companies wonder why piracy is back on the rise. We have been duped.
- catach 3y agoIs piracy on the rise? That seems like a difficult thing to reliably track.
- aqme28 3y agoAnecdotally, I've found myself doing it again. I used to when I was young, but totally stopped up until about a year ago. Illegal streaming sites have become impressively good. Better UX than Netflix.
- Fluorescence 3y agoThere are lots of decent signals out there if someone did want to track it: standard site/search term tracking, the number of leechers of torrents, activity in pirate subreddits/discords, installs of Jellyfin/Plex servers etc. FWIW I can't say I have noticed any radical increase in popularity. The number of Leechers on the most popular piratebay torrents are only in the 100s so I assume it's very niche. I suspect that "playing an .mkv file" is already too technical/clunky for much of the public compared to using streaming app. Let alone setting up a seedbox and media server behind a VPN or whatever for the best experience.
- aqme28 3y agoI think (from my and my friend's behavior), that a lot of movie streaming has moved away from torrents and onto free streaming sites. There's no longer any reason to download a movie you're going to watch once, and it's harder for ISPs to track you down.
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- deleted 3y ago
- WarOnPrivacy 3y agoThere's a demographic that pays for content and then watches it on unofficial streaming sites - driven there in reaction to big platforms' ahole designs (can't filter or search well, pre-roll ads). This will cement that group a bit.
- slowmovintarget 3y agoI'm willing to buy Blu-Rays. I'm also willing to stop watching "content" altogether. I'm already hating the experience of the forced unskippable ads for Paramount shows that play at the beginning (AT MAX VOLUME) of every Paramount+ channel stream (Star Trek... sigh). If I have to watch ads like regular network TV, which I now find unwatchable, I'd just have to do without.
- lsaferite 3y agoYeah, the recent NFL ads are obnoxious. I don't like sports. I never watch sports. I avoid sports related content. Forcing me to watch an ad for NFL before every episode of a show is beyond annoying. I think I've hit my limit and will be researching running my own content library now.
- Copernicron 3y agoI find live sports are the one thing actually worth subscribing to myself. But then again I enjoy a good hockey, football, or baseball game. I know there are alternative streams but the quality is always poor and they're iffy at best. Any conventional show I can find in other ways.
- coldpie 3y agoWeirdly, I'm able to skip Paramount's pre-roll ads on Xbox, but not on their iPhone app. Anyway, I've heard Paramount's streaming service isn't doing so well[1], so with any luck they will give up and go back to Netflix. [1] https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/paramount-just-quit-streaming-point-002106405.html https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/paramount-just-quit-stre...
- danaris 3y agoSo long as they don't give up and try to get a tax write-off by just black-holing all those shows instead like some other studios did...
- smileysteve 3y ago
- alwaysrunning 3y agoI was surprised that Prime is ranked 3rd according to 2022 data from Statista, I almost never watch anything on it but watch several channels through it and wonder if that counts towards their stats. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1368336/video-streaming-users-us-by-platform/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1368336/video-streaming-...
- BoxFour 3y agoI had a similar curiosity and just inquired about it at work. It turns out there's quite a bit of children's programming (possibly exclusively) available on Prime Video, which could be at least one reason for its popularity among families.
- bombcar 3y agoIt’s huge but getting worse. There used to be large swaths available on Prime but it seems reduced, and you might as well just watch it on YouTube directly.
- happytoexplain 3y agoIf I get in mind to watch a movie or show that's not a popular current series, I find most of the time that only prime has it, or prime and some streaming service that I'm not going to add to my stack of subscriptions just for one movie/show, especially because nowadays thanks to my experience with Hulu, it takes a little research to tell if I'm going to get ads even if I pay for the service, and I'd rather not spend that time.
- yomlica8 3y agoIt does seem like Amazon has bought up rights to a lot of older content.
- pasc1878 3y agoMany Prime users will have it for the delivery options (and the black pattern they got to buy it). Once you have that the video streaming is there so why not use it.
- sarchertech 3y agoAs long as they have an add free option for a reasonable price I’m fine with it. It seems likely that with the money they are spending on shows streaming isn’t currently profitable. Looks like $2.99 extra a month gets you no ads.
- JadeNB 3y ago> Looks like $2.99 extra a month gets you no ads. That's only a reasonable price if you discount the $15/month you're already paying. I mean, maybe it's reasonable anyway, and sure that $15/month is also paying for other things; but let's not discount the existing price just because it's existing.
- throw9away6 3y agoI’d be happy to drop prime video out of the normal package. The only good show is the expanse. The rest is mostly meh. The lord of the rings bonfire is mostly a flop
- rz2k 3y agoAt some point advertisers are going to say they don’t want to reach people who don’t pay the $2.99, and eventually the ad-free tier will become “limited ads”. Why would Amazon leave all that money on the table? Even PBS has about a minute and a half of “major corporate funders” ads on their nightly news.
- sarchertech 3y agoThat’s a real possibility. The more money you pay to avoid ads, the more valuable you are to advertises. I hope that it’s not inevitable though because there are so many streaming services, and because piracy and VPNs are an option. If I had my way I’d create regulation that forces companies to offer ad free versions for some multiple above the ad supported price.
- tensor 3y agoAnd at that point I cancel and find other ways to get the content ad-free. Maybe I can buy shows I like individually on Apple TV, or I don't watch them. I have a hard no ads policy.
- mmahemoff 3y agoIt’s funny how blatantly every streaming service waits for Netflix to do anything bold before doing same thing. It’s like what happens when Apple does something like removing headphone socket. Backlash from the loud minority “I’ll never buy another iPhone again”. then every competitor quietly follows. (In Australia, Binge app – the main local streamer with HBO shows etc – also started ads a few months ago, with a higher ad-free tier.)
- 1980phipsi 3y agoStill made about the removal of the headphone socket though...
- nemacol 3y agoSame. BT is expensive garbage.
- mortehu 3y agoSome headsets now come with USB-C connectors instead of 3.5mm jack. For example Koss PortaPro.
- nemacol 3y agoIn a decade or two when every device has the USB-C instead of 3.5, I will be pretty excited about that. Until then I have to spend my time searching out those dongles.
- coldpie 3y agoIt's not so bad. Buy a half-dozen dongles, grab a new one from the pile when your current one breaks, and buy another half-dozen when you take the last one from the pile. I find Best Buy's Insignia brand lasts longest. Is it as good a headphone jack? No. But it's not that bad either.
- 3y ago
- BEEdwards 3y agoHey BE why do you pirate media and refuse to subscribe to streaming services? This is why...
- rerx 3y agoEarlier submission today where this is already being discussed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37610500 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37610500
- dannyphantom 3y agoWas never really able to find a great way to land in a role where you track and measure conversions but it's always been a [admittedly lame...] interest of mine. TV ads seem to be more about brand awareness instead of actually generating conversions (as much as Hulu tries on FireTV) but it's kind of cool to look at objectively all the same. Curious to see what kind of ads Amazon will allow on their streaming platform, how much those ads will cost, how much more expensive it will be to inject ads into any of their 'most watched this week/month' programs, and blah blah blah - the numbers and metrics will be fun to look at once they are published. All the streaming services are in the process of migrating to this model which was kinda the main thing they advertised as not doing...but we're in 2023 now...so c'est la vie, I guess. Another user used the term "adflation" which is a pretty concise way to view the shifting model.
- rendall 3y agoI flat out do not watch ads. If a platform has ads, I do not watch it full stop. I pay YouTube for no ads. If I lost that option, I would not watch YouTube. Same with all of the other streaming services. Netflix pushed it last year with preview rolls. It was barely acceptable/tolerable. But I will eagerly jettison any service that makes me pay for ads. Heck, I even look askance at people who willingly pay money to unironically wear logos. Why do you do that? You, yes, you reading this. Why do you buy Nike clothing or Adidas track suits or Louis Vuitton anything?? Explain yourself.
- isoprophlex 3y agoIt is really not so repulsive to see the poor asking for money as to see the rich asking for more money. And advertisement is the rich asking for more money.
- lisper 3y ago-- G.K. Chesterton
- isoprophlex 3y agoThanks. I forgot the exact quote, found it searching the internet on some shady quote aggregator site, but no attribution...
- parineum 3y agoPresumably, the poor here asking for money is beggars literally just asking for money while advertisements are telling you about things you could get with money. It's a nice quip but it doesn't represent reality at all.
- aendruk 3y agoThis sounds backwards to me. The way I experience it, the reality of advertisements is that they are attempts at manipulating me, and the framing as mere news about nice things is part of the trick.
- physicsguy 3y agoFreevee was an obvious step towards this.
- molave 3y agoYes. I don't mind ads if the service is free. Put it in a paid service, I'll consider my outlay "money on the table" better spent on more productive/fulfilling ventures.
- rerx 3y agoFreevee disgusts me. I don't think there's any paid option to watch Bosch: Legacy without ads.
- readthenotes1 3y agoIt's free (doesn't require amazon). Is Bosch so bad that it's not worth renumerating the publisher/actors/etc?
- Copernicron 3y agoI only use prime for the expedited shipping. I've tried finding something to watch but it's nothing but endless garbage.
- tycho-newman 3y agoAnd we are back to the cable model! We did it everyone! We cut the cable and chained ourselves to the tech companies!
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y agoWhy can't cable companies innovate and spend billions in VC money to subsidize cable and make it $5/mo?
- tycho-newman 3y agoEBITDA.
- thoughtpalette 3y agoJust cancelled my prime and set to not auto-renew a week or so ago. As I was doing that, I noticed the pricing was going to increase by ANOTHER $20 USD, from $120 currently, to $140. I've been getting so many delivery delays lately it's just not worth it. I'll stick to the other streaming services for now.
- NickC25 3y agoImagine a world where a guy worth over 150 billion dollars who owns a company worth over a trillion dollars and has a quasi-monopoly over the internet is in such desperate need of more money to the point where he's going to put advertising on his video platform, even though people already pay for the platform. Instead of raising prices moderately, or putting better content on the platform, they decide to instead put ads on the platform. Some people just don't have the ability to say "yeah, we've got enough". Sad.
- mumblemumble 3y ago> Some people just don't have the ability to say "yeah, we've got enough". It seems fairly clear to me that having more stuff makes people more greedy. And, yes, there is causation there, not just correlation. You can even see this in young children. Give a pack of preschoolers a mountain of toys, more than they could possibly use, and they will immediately begin hoarding and fighting over them. Give that exact same group of preschoolers three empty cardboard boxes and a wooden spoon, and they will use them as props in a cooperative game.
- TeMPOraL 3y ago> It seems fairly clear to me that having more stuff makes people more greedy. And, yes, there is causation there, not just correlation. My hypothesis for this is that wealth isn't free; the more you have, the more expensive maintaining it is, the more rapidly it'll evaporate if you fail to maintain it, and the worse it'll hurt. In case of Amazon, it's probably less that they're bored and are coveting more money for no reason - it's more likely that they face the usual pressures for growth and continue to seek opportunities to squeeze more money out of people. > You can even see this in young children. Give a pack of preschoolers a mountain of toys, more than they could possibly use, and they will immediately begin hoarding and fighting over them. Give that exact same group of preschoolers three empty cardboard boxes and a wooden spoon, and they will use them as props in a cooperative game. I question that. I have two small children, and whether they're dealing with a mountain of toys, or three pans and a wooden spoon, they'll switch between fighting over a single thing and playing cooperatively every couple minutes. They're very quick to get into a fight, and even quicker to make up again.
- bluescrn 3y agoGives me a good reason to cancel Prime. Haven't been getting so much value out of free delivery as I'm not buying much physical media any more. Between Prime Video and the occasional delivery, it seemed worth keeping it. But I won't watch a streaming service with ads. Its value to me would be reduced right down to zero.
- neilv 3y agoYeah, I'm currently paying monthly for Amazon Prime, and every time I think of canceling, I decide that I'm still using Prime Video as my only streaming service. I experimentally tried the Prime Video "free with ads" content, and there's no way I'm going to tolerate that, much less pay for it. Oh, besides Amazon's "free with ads" ruining the content experience, and also being a little creepy and making me feel dumber, they recently pulled a whopper of a faux pas: every Prime Video ads break included a commercial for HIV medication. Assuming that ads are somewhat personalized, as many other ads seemed to be, this was startling. I don't have HIV, my doctor would've told me, I'm not at elevated risk, I haven't browsed about it, I haven't searched Amazon for anything I know to correlate, haven't knowingly shared my WiFi, what is Amazon smoking this time, etc. All thoughts I went through. Was I watching a show before that? For entertainment and relaxation? Just now, I remembered the phrase "Netflix and Chill", and imagined someone getting this barrage of presumably targeted HIV video commercials on their personal Amazon account, on an evening that they had a special someone over. Would that someone persevere until the fourth time the video was interrupted for an extended discussion of HIV medication, before they said, "I'm gonna go now"? The first of the Amazon Leadership Principles: > Customer Obsession -- Leaders start with the customer and work backwards. They work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust. Although leaders pay attention to competitors, they obsess over customers. I don't see how anything about the FreeVee "free with ads" is consistent with the customer's trust. I suspect this and some other recent changes are more like people frittering away others' past long-term investments, in an attempt at short-term returns.
- dpkirchner 3y agoI've seen the same ads on their "free" movies. The way I see it, either some big pharma screwed up their ad targeting or Amazon is scamming them (the real customer) big time.
- jamesmontalvo3 3y agoThis is the final straw for me. I’ve wanted to cancel Amazon services for a while but since I have several bundled it was just painful enough to not want to make the effort.
- lucidguppy 3y agoI am definitely getting more books from the library now. I'm sorry but everything sucks now. There's no point anymore in trying to find good content. They've done this on purpose - and you can't fight it.
- t1mmen 3y ago20 years ago, Steam was the reason I stopped pirating games. Netflix et al had the same effect for TV & movies. Today, I subscribe to 5 different streaming services, and occasionally do a month of various “channels” in those apps. I want to pay for content, but the camels back is about to break. I truly don’t want to set sails again, but the bullshit has been adding up for a while. Ads is where I draw the line.
- Tokkemon 3y agoGood thing I didn't throw away all those DVDs.
- kurtoid 3y agoI have Amazon Prime, but I guess I'll pirate Prime Video too
- blibble 3y agoI cancelled full Prime as it had those pre-roll ads for other "quality" Amazon products/services I'm not paying to watch ads, period
- ChrisArchitect 3y ago[dupe]
- ChrisArchitect 3y agoMore discussion over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37610500 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37610500
- tyjen 3y agoIt was obvious this was coming down the pipeline in Amazon's streaming life cycle. Even before this, they were injecting their own original content adds (skippable) at the start of every movie/show. I would unsubscribe again if possible.
- xhkkffbf 3y agoSo Prime used to be free content plus two day delivery. Now it seems like delivery routinely takes 3 to as much as 10 days. What am I getting for the price of Prime?
- thiht 3y agoThey've already killed Prime Video in the last year. I cancelled my Amazon Prime subscription yesterday because: - 1-day delivery is not a thing anymore - Prime Video used to be my favorite streaming service, now it sucks. Every time I want to watch something, I have to pay an additional subscription, and it's way too hard to find what's actually included - it's too expensive for the value it provides (70€). Actually I'm not sure what value it provides anymore
- joe__f 3y ago1 day delivery is still going for most products in the UK
- duffyjp 3y agoThe thing keeping me on Prime has been their unlimited photo backup service. The desktop app either doesn't work anymore or I have too much content for it to handle. It spins and spins but nothing happens. I can manually backup via the web client but it's a huge pain and there's no automatic sync of new content. I never really know if I'm 100% backed up either. I was excited to see Apple announce new iCloud tiers above their old 2TB limit, but the prices go up linearly with storage and as an amateur photography enthusiast I'm not sure even the 6TB $30/mo plan would cover me. The only other choice is an eye-watering $60/mo plan for 12TB.
- pers0n 3y agoonly buy it when you need it and when its cheaper than regular shipping, which is rare if you hvae over $25 of stuff. I rarely buy stuff, there are only like 1 or 2 times a year when I need something fast that I need Prime. I try to get from Walmart of other sites if possible.
- arealaccount 3y agoInteresting that all this competition creating some sort of a reverse capitalism effect.
- ctvo 3y agoAmazon Prime Video spent 16 billion dollars on content last year and it's the worst of all the major streaming platform when it comes to original programming. In the last year, their big budget bombs: - Wheel of Time barely watchable CW quality TV - Lord of the Rings oh my gosh level bad - Citadel unwatchable it's so bad I will admit they do have some OK recent content. The Peripheral was entertaining, for example. But man, who gets fired for those billion dollar bombs?
- effingwewt 3y agoThose should have all been runaway hits. WoT and LOTR especially, all they had to do was stick to what made it successful in the first place. Instead Rand was sidelined, they made me hate Galadriel, et al. I can't imagine paying millions for a recipe and then throwing it out because I think I know better.
- Ancalagon 3y agoGlad I canceled prime. The lineup was worse than Netflix’s anyway
- happytiger 3y agoYea if they do this we’re going to cancel. Live is bad enough, but we don’t do ads in our house. Period. Everyone should have this bias. Then we wouldn’t have this shit show.
- inversetelecine 3y agoUnfortunately, ad supported stream services are making tons of cash and aren't going anywhere. Just like Netflix and password sharing crackdown, outside of the tech bubble, people don't care. Or don't care enough.
- OnlyMortal 3y agoI’ll be sure not to renew my Prime Video subscription then. There’s very little I watch on Amazon to start with.
- at_a_remove 3y agoI am figuring by a decade in change: 1) A completely ad-free tier. Costs an extra thirty dollars per month, most of which goes to making the platforms own "originals" that nobody much wants. 2) A "some-ads" tier. (This already exists) Just a few. You won't mind much. And at an extra fifteen a month, what a steal! 3) The "lots of ads" tier. The basic offering. 4) The "tons of ads" tier, might as well be watching television. Programs may have material removed so as to fit more ads into the runtime. Microtransaction pay of a few bucks. 5) The "vicious hellscape of ads" tier. Like #4, but the various offsprings of Stable Diffusion and whatever will seamlessly overlay and inject product placement through the entire show. A character won't be offered a whiskey, they'll be offered Johnnie Walker Blue Label whiskey, and in the original actor's voice. Cans of Coke or Pepsi (whoever is paying most according to that hour's ad market) will be digitally added to dinner tables and nightstands. Some actors may be "faced over" with more popular actors. It's not Payola anymore, but a pop hit of 2035 will be playing in Casablanca. But it is free.
- CatWChainsaw 3y agoWe don't need to disrupt an industry. We need to disrupt the fact that the global economy is set up to need continuous exponential growth or the whole thing collapses. It reached the point of diminishing returns long ago and is actively killing us at this point yet so many people, here especially, will deny that even as they suffocate.
- SergeAx 3y agoHaul me under keel, I still root for torrents. Moreover, there's so little good content is produced nowadays, that more than a half of movies I am watching recently are 10-20 years old. I also have IMAX theater conveniently nearby for AAA titles. Ads there are inevitable, though.
- gigel82 3y agoThat's BS; we use the 2-day shipping and need nothing else, bundling everything like that should be illegal.
- bombcar 3y agoYou don’t even get the two day anymore, it’s basically worthless for shipping anymore.
- spike021 3y agoI've been really surprised lately how often I go to a product page, see "Prime 2-day shipping, fulfilled by Amazon" and when I order it often takes ~5 days to get my order. Definitely picking the shipped/sold by Amazon listings too, not third party marketplace ones. I'm in the Bay Area, so not a remote area either. Also if I check the tracking, it's not that it gets stuck in the Bay, like if it's just a busy week of deliveries and they couldn't move mine; the order will get stuck in some random state in the country and not move, or sometimes it ends up in some other hub like in Florida or something despite starting in the Midwest. Or it just takes 3-4 days to ship from the warehouse. I wonder if some products just don't get marked as backordered and so it's a matter of Amazon needing to wait for stock to come in. Or they're just not guaranteeing 2-day delivery anymore.
- bombcar 3y agoWhere I am they have pretty accurate delivery dates, they’re just “prime” and something like “early next week”. It’s annoying and makes Walmart just as good or better many times.
- gs17 3y ago>Or they're just not guaranteeing 2-day delivery anymore. They haven't been, in my experience. They used to throw you a free month (or more) when you complain it took a week, now they just kind of say you could return it if you want. Very late items sometimes do get a refund, but that's rare.
- nickthegreek 3y ago
- anakaine 3y agoThis is the point where I will stop paying for Prime membership. I was sucked in via dark patterns (which they are now being taken to task over by federal gov) and I've just idly maintained it because I occasionally watch stuff. Once they inject ads, I disconnect the service because I'm not paying to be served intrusive advertising.
- kqr2 3y agoTLDR: Amazon prime video is introducing ads. Ad free will be $2.99 extra per month.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- netman21 3y agoAds completely detract from the user experience watching movies. Amazon should know this.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- BeetleB 3y agoAnd you should know they have an ad-free option.
- falcolas 3y agoI cant think of one positive thing to say about this. It’s a dick^wcorporate move whose sole purpose is to extract more money out of its existing users. I guess they believe the market can bear siphoning a bit more profit. At least for a little while.
- makeitdouble 3y ago> No action is required for Prime members While I understand why it needs to be stated, it was such a funny line in the middle of this announcement. This is also one of these cases where it goes out in US and some select western countries first, and they will shape the evolution of the product before it hits the rest of the world. I'm pretty much hoping there's a big uproar in the first countries, because otherwise it's enough of a pain that I'd be out of Prime for good (video is the only part barely justifying the price for me now). PS: This feels like the same shakedown as Youtube prime: we're paying to not getting bullied, and there's no frame of reference on how much it should be priced as they're not selling a product, but a protection.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- c0pium 3y agoAh yes, the classic shakedown where companies sell products for money. How dare they.
- makeitdouble 3y ago"pay for less ads" is a product in the sense that ad blockers or piehole style network filtering devices are products. It's not a product when it's implemented by the same company that injects the ads in the first place.
- c0pium 3y agoIt’s pay with ads or pay with cash. Which is what everyone always says they want.
- adocomplete 3y agoThis is dumb. I have been subscribed to Prime for almost a decade now. I wish there was a tier that was lower cost and didn't include Prime Video as I never use it nor have any plans to use it. They justified Prime price increases by adding all these fringe "benefits" and now they're charging extra for those benefits, and the price of Prime keeps rising YoY. No thanks.
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- tallytarik 3y ago> I wish there was a tier that was lower cost and didn't include Prime Video as I never use it nor have any plans to use it. That’s pretty close to what they’re doing here. Now you’re no longer subsidising an ad-free video service if you don’t use it.
- dylan604 3y agoSo, $2.99/month * 12 = $35.88/year. Are they really saying that they are going to make less than $36USD per year from viewers being served ads? Otherwise, why would they allow an ad free experience if it is leaving money on the table?
- macNchz 3y agoPerhaps anticipated churn from users who are heavy video users but will not tolerate ads?
- mintplant 3y agoThis is me. I won't be using Prime Video once they start showing ads with it. I don't think I'll spring for the ad-free upgrade, though, because the whole thing has left a bad taste in my mouth.
- nerdponx 3y agoThey think removing ads will be worth $2.99 to people, and that they'll make enough off of this + the ads themselves to offset the loss of some people leaving due to the add.
- jmyeet 3y agoAll these streaming services are rushing towards $20/month at a time when the content pipeline has dried up with the WGA/SAG strike over the unsustainable streaming model. I’ve always resented the bundling of Prime delivery with a wannabe Netflix service. This change means I either won’t use the the video service anymore or I’ll have to pay more. Time to go back to piracy.
- cgio 3y agoExactly this. Is this a way to pass the cost of the WGA/SAG negotiation to consumers? It sounds like it, and it might even make sense as such. The challenge is that the cost is passed while content is not generated, so as consumer the reasonable choice is to also "strike" on subscriptions for a while, until the pipeline is full again. Hopefully this strike will stick, the same way subscriptions tend to stick.
- ytdytvhxgydvhh 3y agoNow that you mention it I’m surprised the actors and/or writers haven’t suggested folks cancel their streaming services temporarily to show support for the “little guys” against the studios. Maybe they’re afraid of the long-term effects if people do get used to watching less?
- Auracle 3y agoI think that would be something like asking a friend to key your boss’s car when you’ve given an ultimatum that you want a raise or you’ll quit.
- cgio 3y agoToo risky for them too, indeed. They go for a bigger piece of the pie, but are motivated for the pie to remain big. I don't know how the content gap will fill though and I do expect people will start cutting down on subscriptions after Christmas. There's only so much one can get from foreign productions where the industry is not scaled, and the criteria for success are even harder. My alternative proposition would be for the actors and writers to allow for crowd-funded productions and go for individual show/movie streams. I would personally invest in a production happening in the midst of dearth of content.
- crazygringo 3y agoProbably most people will disagree, but I'm happy with this. I pay for Prime exclusively for the shipping. I never wanted video in the first place. So if Amazon needs to raise prices/revenue, I prefer that they keep Prime the same, and raise the price (now +$2.99/mo.) for people who are big watchers of Prime Video and don't want ads. So this price segmentation makes sense to me.
- clay_the_ripper 3y agoAlthough I hate ads, the option to pay $3/mo to not have them seems entirely reasonable. The value I get from prime is far in excess of what I pay for it - even at a much higher price.
- flandish 3y agoExcept it’s not reasonable and they outright lied. To say they are not increasing prices but then to keep the same quality / category of service you have to pay more … is sociopath / gaslight speak for “we are raising prices.” Being ok with it because it’s “only 3 bucks” is just letting them know it’s ok and they and others will do it more and more. Amazon makes plenty of profit. They can have a lower price option with ads.. and keep ad free the same.
- Auracle 3y agoIt’s too bad that ever since COVID prime shipping no longer means 2 day shipping - at least in my area. I question why we’re still paying for it as we don’t use Prime Video much either.
- blagie 3y agoI recently left Prime. I was disappointed to see ads introduced into Amazon Music, for music I'd paid for. I could get the same music with ads elsewhere. To me, if I can't keep music I'd paid for, there's a strong case for piracy.
- Dennip 3y agoWhilst I use prime video, thats only because it comes 'for free' alongside shipping, which (at least in the UK) still is pretty good in terms of next-day, sometimes even same day. I wish they would do a cheaper tier without all these additional 'benefits' (Video, Music, Twitch etc), but I suspect the reality is that its sort of a loss leader even without those benefits.
- c0pium 3y agoGood news then, that’s what they did. You get a $36/year discount for not getting ad free movies and a $120/year discount for not getting music.
- Dennip 3y agoIts still gone up from the original price to £95 a year though, removing features now, such as ad-free video, doesn't come with a discount. In fact there is no option to totally opt out of video and pay less tha £95.
- uejfiweun 3y agoThank you Amazon for this display of unbridled greed. You've helped me realize that I really don't need Prime for anything, I barely use Amazon anyway due to all the fake products, so I am going to cancel and save myself >$100 a year. If I cancel Prime, do I lose access to the Prime Videos I have already bought? I have LOTR extended on there as well as a bunch of seasons of Always Sunny.
- BryanLegend 3y agoAren't they re-investing all of their revenue still?
- sparrish 3y agoNo, you won't lose access to videos you've already purchased if you cancel Prime. I cancelled a few years ago and can still access the video I purchased before.
- ComputerGuru 3y agoYou keep the videos you bought but some are saying you’ll only be able to watch them with ads.
- DueDilligence 3y ago[dead]
- maxerickson 3y agoI wonder if they would make more money if they focused on providing a good service instead of on incrementally maximizing revenue. Like imagine a streaming service where you could rent shows for a couple weeks for almost nothing, with a huge catalog. People would be all over it. Instead, they are looking at how to segment people that are using their service into groups that get a shitty experience or pay a bit more per year.
- yieldcrv 3y agoI actually use Uber Delivery on many household items these days, which is same hour delivery with Uber drivers going to local stores, and I believe I pay Uber One for some shipping cost reduction or it comes with a credit card I have or something I did look at Amazon just to browse the items and get a feel for it, there might be foreshadowing here as that's what I used to use brick and mortar stores for pre-pandemic, before ordering on Amazon. this time, I was amused by the shipping times in comparison to Uber Delivery. I haven't seen same-day delivery in a while but these were 2+ days, either way I don't even like "by 10pm, I swear, maybe". so... hm, maybe I can cancel Amazon Prime. shipping was the only thing keeping me, and prime video comes in handy rarely and its stuff I still have to pay for. the same paid catalogue is everywhere.
- allthecybers 3y agoSo they’ve abandoned being the world’s best employer by forcing return to office and return to hub. Now they are publicly abandoning customer obsession by putting ads in the middle of a movie. Unless of course you pay them extra on top of a $100+ subscription fee that has already increased YoY. This is just the start of the Amazon extracting more and more from their customers. Enshitification of everything continues.
- SpaceNoodled 3y agoIt's day 2 at Amazon.
- allthecybers 3y agoWell said. I agree 100%.
- tmaly 3y agoI guess paying for Netflix is not so bad if it stays ad free.
- aworks 3y agoI thought that Netflix and other services had permanently put me off watching movies with ads. For some reason, I started watching Tubi TV which has ads. If I turned off the audio during the commerical break, I found it was a reasonable experience. I'm now doing the same when I watch sports with ads. So I'm guessing I won't pay extra to disable Prime Video ads. Likewise with podcasts, I press the jump forward button to skip ads. It's satisfactory if not perfect.
- mgarfias 3y agoI signed up for two day delivery. I haven’t had that with any regularity in years. This might just be the thing that makes me unsubscribe
- beej71 3y agoJust ordered bicycle fenders from my local shop. Ordered a new moto air filter from the local shop. Same prices as Amazon. Yes, I have to bicycle there to pick them up, but I think I'm going to enjoy it. Thanks for the encouragement, Amazon!
- flandish 3y agoAhh so “we are not raising the price” becomes “if you want to keep the same quality of service thats an extra 2.99/month.” Which is capitalism speak for “we are raising the price.” Shitheads.