Prime Video with Commercials: A Review
Amazon Prime Video, the on-demand streaming service that Amazon offers as part of its Amazon Prime subscription service, now interrupts its videos for advertising. This new form of the service was rolled out in late January after the company had played around with the idea in its “Freevee” ad-based service. It was announced in advance as a way to follow a perceived trend in streaming services that would lead the streaming video industry out of the loss-making purgatory they’ve become trapped in.
For me, Amazon’s switch has made the choice easy: I aim to cancel my long-standing subscription.
I was a relatively early adopter of Amazon Prime, at first because the service offered free shipping on small orders of less than 25 dollars. This price cap was related to Amazon’s original business of selling physical books, encouraging customers either to subscribe or to accumulate several titles before completing their orders for shipment. At some point they decided to join the online video business undergoing transformation by Netflix, as that company moved from mail-order DVD movie rentals to online streaming, all made possible by improvements to online download speeds.
Since I had originally kept Prime specifically because of the ad-free video streaming, this new feature was a step too far. Granted, Amazon will still allow ad-free streaming if you pay another three dollars a month. But that to me feels like an unacceptable change to the terms I originally signed up for.
Another aspect of the backstory here was the innovation by which you could avoid TV commercials. When TiVo came out with digital-video recording for cable TV subscribers, it added greater value to the television experience: Suddenly you could record the shows you wanted to watch and watch them later while you fast-forwarded past the commercials. You could also watch broadcast TV shows on your schedule rather than the TV networks’. The new subscription streaming services omitted commercial interruptions entirely. That, after all, was the justification for paying a monthly or annual subscription.
Some streaming services have always had commercial interruptions—but these generally offered their content without requiring subscriptions. This has been the main way people consume YouTube as well. And as a YouTube user, I accept those terms, especially because they have always been there, and always generally the same.
I decided to try out Prime Video with the new ad model, and I’ve concluded it isn’t for me anymore. I’m also not willing to pay the considerably higher price for the ad-free version, in part because I don’t trust the company all that much now. They keep changing terms to raise their prices while reducing their overall value.
Ad-financed network TV is a thing of the distant past for me. And Amazon with ads is more than I’m willing to put up with, my expectations having been set. Commercials interrupting YouTube is something I’ve always accepted as a part of the free access. But I really don’t want ads on TV that I’m paying a subscription to access. Worst of all, the TiVo innovation of being able to fast-forward through them is not an option on streaming video.
In its favor, Amazon Prime does produce a lot of its own original programming, but to me it seems like the company has dialed back on its offerings in recent years. There is little of that content that appeals to me now, and there is also less of it. The ads that interrupt Amazon original shows are fewer and shorter than in other programming, but at this point I’m suspicious: The company has shown it is willing to surprise subscribers by raising prices and simultaneously decreasing service. That is never a satisfying formula for customer satisfaction.
To be fair, I should point out Amazon Prime does certainly offer subscribers access to a large catalogue of TV shows and movies. For users who don’t mind the ads, there is a lot of value here.
My rating of the new Amazon Prime with ads is two out of five stars.
I also agree with your take. While we still have Amazon, we are a bit undecided as to whether we'll continue with it and I have looked at other buying options a bit. The promise of commercial-free viewing was a good thing and we just don't watch ads. Hulu starts with ads but does not interrupt the movies so I just mute the first 90 seconds, or so, and then we watch. I can live with that model. It is the interruptions we despise and, since we are paying a subscription, why must we be double charged either in the form of commercial interruptions or an added fee? Alas, I don't think market forces will make them abandon this new line of profit, which brings me to this thought about profit, in general. Is there ever a time when it is enough? Must corporations always seek to make more than they did last year if last year was profitable? Like some, we will reconsider our choices but I think there will be too many who will accept the new terms to force them to return to the old price structure.
I agree with your views here. I despise being assaulted with ads everywhere I turn, which is why I watch very little live TV, no commercial radio, and pay for Netflix and Pandora. I like to describe myself as a marketer's nightmare. But I'm also a bit conflicted when I remind myself how much my investment portfolio depends on the success of Amazon, Google and the other big tech companies that are heavily dependent on the ad model. Side note: I just read that Bezos sold Amazon stock worth $8.5B yesterday. I don't begrudge him his wealth. His baby has provided the world with many innovations and conveniences, while providing jobs for about 800K people (last I checked). That's a huge contribution to our economy.