You’ve had a long day at work. Kick off your shoes, curl up on the couch with a mug, click Amazon Prime Video on your TV, and get ready to enjoy the new season of Reacher.
But just as Jack Reacher, played by Alan Ritchson, is about to knock out the latest bad guy with his incredibly muscular arms, you suddenly find yourself looking at an ad for toothpaste, productivity software, or sports betting. . What on earth happened?
On Monday, Amazon’s streaming service, which distributes originals such as “Reacher,” “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” and “The Lord of the Rings: Ring of Power,” announced that customers will be able to watch their favorite TV shows and movies. We started distributing advertisements inside. Do you want it or not? To eliminate commercials, you must subscribe to a more expensive service, which costs an additional $2.99 per month (on top of the current $14.99 per month, or $139 per year).
Although the company isn’t specific, it promises “significantly less advertising than linear TV and other streaming TV providers.” However, some ads are better than no ads. Audiences and creators are angry, and there’s not as much demand from advertisers themselves, but change is here nonetheless. Here’s everything you need to know about advertising and why it’s slowly becoming a bigger part of the streaming ecosystem.
Why is Amazon forcing me to watch ads?
In one word: money! As streamers look for ways to squeeze more money out of their subscribers every day, commercials have become an important part of their strategies. Netflix, which once vowed to be ad-free, introduced an ad-supported tier in 2023 and has promoted that tier with discount offers through Verizon Wireless and others. Ads have also appeared on other previously commercial-free streamers, including Disney+ and Max.
Rather than encourage subscribers to switch to a cheaper version of Prime Video with ads, Amazon decided to make watching ads the default version of the service. So if “Jack Ryan” wants to return to a world uninterrupted by razor commercials, he’ll have to shell out more cash.
This is ridiculous. What can we do about it?
That’s stupid. no mistake. This is bad for the consumer experience, and the reaction from unsuspecting Prime members is filled with righteous anger. Nobody likes commercials. No one likes something they’ve already paid a lot of money for suddenly becoming a terrible experience. Especially not when high inflation means paying more for what you already have, which hits your wallet harder than it did in good times.
What can we do about it? Not so much. If you want a commercial-free experience, you can pay to upgrade. It costs $216 per year if you pay monthly, or $175 with annual Prime payments. (By comparison, Netflix’s standard ad-free tier costs about $186 per year.)
You might cancel a streamer you don’t watch often. If you don’t want to pay more, you can mute the commercials. Living with commercials is a good way to teach children what television used to be. See if you can go to the bathroom and come back before the commercial break ends and pretend you can’t pause. Live on the edge.
If you want to show your displeasure, you can cancel Prime, but then you’ll lose your two-day free shipping. In any case, this is probably the main reason why many people subscribe to Prime.
How do Amazon Prime subscribers feel about advertising?
Subscribers are furious, to say the least.
“Amazon’s net worth is almost $2 trillion. This is just greed. I canceled,” one Reddit user wrote in an expletive-filled thread discussing the change. “I’m thinking of canceling. I don’t like rewarding this behavior,” said another man. A third user said: “I hate ads so I won’t be using this service.” “To me, advertising is an imposition that shouldn’t be inserted into paid platforms. Where does accepting this get us?”
And it’s not just about our subscribers, it’s also about the creative talent behind Amazon’s content. Lulu Wang, whose TV series “Expats” starring Nicole Kidman has just started airing, expressed her extreme dissatisfaction. “I’m very angry about that. If I had known, I would have produced it differently, because this is not a show with cliffhangers or commercial breaks to make sure people keep coming back.” The body,” Wang told The Hollywood Reporter.
Will there be more ads in streaming?
Unfortunately it is. Streaming has swept into a media landscape that promises to be the future of television, free of the coveted commercials and with great TV shows made by the best creators in unlimited time slots and budgets. And it was like that for a while. Then in 2022, Netflix lost subscribers for the first time, Wall Street panicked, and streamers suddenly had to show more profits, not subscriber profits, to satisfy shareholders. (Capitalism is all about making shareholders happy, after all.) Now it’s basically basic cable again, full of bundles, ads, and mediocre programming.
If the value of an ad-supported subscription drops, what happens next? On top of an even higher subscription fee, we feature more products and run more ads per episode or movie. Don’t make too many predictions so the streamer can’t get more ideas.
