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Amazon Developing a Free, Ad-Supported Version of Prime Video: Report (adage.com)
Amazon is developing a free, ad-supported complement to its Prime streaming video service, AdAge reported on Monday, citing people familiar with Amazon's plans. From the report: The company is talking with TV networks, movie studios and other media companies about providing programming to the service, they say. Amazon Prime subscribers pay $99 per year for free shipping but also access to a mix of ad-free TV shows, movies and original series such as "Transparent" and "The Man in the High Castle." It has dabbled in commercials on Prime to a very limited degree, putting ads inside National Football League games this season and offering smaller opportunities for brand integrations. A version paid for by advertisers instead of subscribers could provide a new foothold in streaming video for marketers, whose opportunities to run commercials are eroding as audiences drift away from traditional TV and toward ad-free services like Netflix and Prime.
I consume probably over $300/month on average from Amazon Video (not accounting for the Prime membership) because I sit at the computer programming most of the day and can put it on a monitor on the side. If I had to have ads playing during shows/movies that would drop to $0/month. I'd prefer getting DVDs for series off of eBay or just not watching anything than sit through marketing filth and allowing it to influence my thoughts in any way.
That's a much better topic for Slashdot than Bill Gates' pledge to fight... eh... what was it again?
Pretty sure he's starting a war on sand: first the Arizona property he plans to pave over and now Alzheimers (brain sand.) Incidentally, there's already a drug which eliminates brain sand, so the only real issue is getting people to take it before the stuff destroys their brain.
Your best viewing experience will be on a Fire HD 10 tablet.
i don't want ads. I pay what Prime costs for fast shipping, the music service and ad free video. if video gets ads on the paid tier, Ill go elsewhere.
I used to use Prime Video quite a bit, since I pay to get the 2-day shipping, and then they started injecting ads, in the form of trailers for other Prime Video things that could not be skipped or blocked. I asked Amazon support how to turn them off, and was politely told off. So, I went back to public libraries and Netflix.
I am already spammed with ads using the fire stick ...
Amazon already advertises its own TV shows in between episodes of other TV shows. This is already irksome to me, but not egregious enough to be a huge problem since I can also skip these ads after a few seconds (though why should I have to?).
All Amazon needs to do to keep my money is to NOT become the ad-infested crapfest that is cable TV. I have never paid for cable and never will because I will not throw half of my money at ads served up to sell me things I don't need. I want content, not a sales pitch.
So can they do the free shipping thing too? Amazon can chuck a few flyers in the box with your stuff.
That's what this is: basically cable TV. You may be getting the content for 'free', but there are commercials, so it's not really 'free', and you have to pay monthly for your broadband internet access (which comes in over a CABLE of some kind, one way or the other) -- so it's essentially cable TV. Gotcha. Is Comcast behind this?
I'll stick with the antenna on my roof, DVR, and DVDs.
The only reason I own a Tivo if for the skip/ff button feature. Even though it only skips N-seconds rather than N-commercials it still works reasonably well enough that I don't stop watching altogether. I never watch anything live, because then I can't skip or fast forward past the social cancer they call advertising.
Basically, Bezos and his deca-billions are reverting back to the business model of TV in the 1950s.
This is what I come to Slashdot for.
There is no drug that changes the course of Alzheimerâ(TM)s. There are cholinesterase inhibitors and Namenda which can slow the progression of symptoms for a while. This is a very devastating disease which I hope no one making snarky comments ever has to experience either personally or in a loved one.
They already show an annoying ad, most of which can be skipped, for their own shows at the start of every damn video now. It's already annoying. Putting more on, even if free, is unacceptable. Commercials destroy the continuity of enjoying a movie or TV series.
Seems to me that the reason to want to move from conventional TV to streaming are precisely BECAUSE there are no adverts. It's not just the annoyance of watching the adverts themselves - it's more subtle than that:
* With advertising, you can't be allowed to fast-forward at will because you'll be able to skip the adverts.
* With advertising, the advertisers are the arbiters of whether a show is successful, not the audience.
* With advertising, "binge watching" produces bad results for the advertisers because all of their ads get shown in a shorter period of elapsed time - they want the long term exposure that comes with a reproducible audience over a period of months to years.
* With advertising, each episode of a show has to incorporate the same amount of advertising to pay for itself. This forces production into a mode where every show is the exact same length - rather than ending where a natural break in the story happens. This results in scripts either being trimmed or padded in ways that are not ideal. A similar effect happens where an advert break is needed in the middle of a piece of drama or a key conversation.
Those things produce worse content than with freely streamed video.
These subtle effects are extremely noticeable when you watch a show that was DESIGNED for adverts versus one that was made for streaming.
Advertising seems like it's free - but you're actually paying for it by wasting your life in 4 minute chunks. Worse still, if they advertise something you actually want to buy - the cost of the advert gets added into your product. Thousands of dollars of the price of a car are the cost of advertising it to you. Cut out adverts - and we all save money...which we can use to pay higher streaming fees.
In the end, the ONLY people who lose out are the ad agencies and production companies...and that's fine by me.
www.sjbaker.org
We promise that your Amazon Prime subscription will show fewer ads than the ad-free people see. Can't you understand how much we are helping you avoid Prime price hikes by just showing you a few ads?
I think I'd actually like to have the choice of not paying for a subscription in exchange for ads. That way, when you want to watch that one series that your preferred streaming service doesn't support, you have one more choice to add to "pay for Yet Another Streaming Service" and "just pirate it." Of course, if the ads take up a particularly large portion of the show like on cable, etc. TV, then I'd still just pirate it.
congratulations, you just invented network TV
Can't help but think this might have something to do with the model Apple has established with the Apple TV. Both Apple and Amazon have promised Amazon Video on Apple TV "this fall" (for the second year in a row). Apple's App Store model allows for free apps and subscription services, with a significant discount off the 30% "revenue sharing" for subs that last over a year. Producing a service like this would allow Amazon to much more easily bring in Amazon Video customers from Apple TV—they come in to ad-supported content for free—with a frictionless way to transistion to a paid subscription with a (likely) lower hit than having to revenue-share the full Prime membership. Then Amazon could advertise Prime membership via commercials, and end-run Apple's restrictions on "advertising" outside-the-App-Store purchasing avenues.
Scott
"Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid."
I strongly disagree!
The reason people switch to local playback, with software intended to purely serve the interests of the user, was to get rid of adverts (or any other problems). Local playback is what everyone did to make TV stop sucking. It starting with VCRs, then Tivo/ReplayTV around the turn of the century, and then culminating with stuff as simple as mpv or fancy as Kodi.
What does every instance of that technological progression share? People-who-sold-ads complained that the too-user-friendly products were helping users skip ads, that's what.
Streaming was never about that. Streaming is for people who want to not own a hard disk (or other significant local storage), and has never been standardized, so that all the streaming services always require that you use their software to play the videos (because of things like DRM, but also to control the user's experience, and primarily for the purpose of showing them things they would otherwise not want to spend time seeing).
The fact that you always have to use weird software to play Amazon videos (it doesn't "Just Work" unless you download the files that pirates make), is how everyone always knew that it was going to include ads some day. There is no reason to use nonstandard interfaces, unless it's to make people use weird software, and the only reason to make people use weird software is to manipulate those people. There isn't a single reason that Amazon and Netflix make you use special clients, except to control what viewers are able to do. Go ahead: try to think up any other reason that makes sense. You won't be able to.
For anyone who is trying to avoid ads, it probably hasn't even occurred to them to try out Amazon or Netflix yet. Those platforms are basically made for ads, where delivering ads was engineering priority #1, even if they aren't showing ads yet. You know for sure that Netflix is definitely going to show ads, otherwise they wouldn't be making you use their client.
Nobody who is anti-ad goes with proprietary streaming; anti-ad people are using their own players on local un-DRMed files.
Ad-skipping is anathema to proprietary streaming. The ultimate purpose of proprietary streaming is to preserve the cable TV industry's status-quo, but with the ability of the publishers to advance (e.g. have more products, and to eventually target the ads more precisely). And to keep them in control so that users don't ever have the opportunity to use something like a VCR.
I see no ads, even in Amazon, and even the ones others claim to see.
uBlock Origin and some browser detritus symlinked to /dev/null. Ads. What ads? uBlock Origin makes this happen easier than anything else. Highly recommended.
I will most definitely carry on paying $100 a year for not been subjected to commercials.
"Nobody who is anti-ad goes with proprietary streaming"
This is patent nonsense. I am anti-ad - and I subscribe to four different streaming services (including NetFlix and Amazon) precisely because they don't have adverts. If they ever DO start using adverts - then I'll unsubscribe and lose nothing.
So right there, there is an "existence proof" that you're wrong.
I stream because (having "cut the cord") I still want to watch some TV now and again. I don't especially care whether I stream or download because I'm not really into watching the same show/movie more than once. I don't want to "own" the content for future use. Streaming is marginally more convenient than downloading because it starts playing within seconds of choosing to watch something rather than having to download the entire thing first...but honestly, I don't give a damn which it is.
I use a Roku for streaming - and the fact that every streaming service has it's own software is no more than a very minor annoyance.
If it was some kind of material where I wanted to watch it more than once - maybe I'd be concerned enough to want to download it...but that's not the case here.
Music would be a different matter. I VERY commonly listen to the same music many, many times - and for that, I need to own my own copy and (preferably) have it stored on my own hard drive.
www.sjbaker.org
Hosts protect when addons can't (or as well):
Bad sites (past ads)
Botnet C&Cs
DNS down/poisoned
Trackers (dns logs/ads/transparent ISP proxy)
Dns blocks
Spam/phish payload
Slowdown 2 ways: adblocks & hardcodes
Hosts = Ez edit.
AB+ 151mb https://www.google.com/search?q=Adblock+memory+consumption&btnG=Search&hl=en&gbv=1/
UBlock 64MB https://www.google.com/search?q=UBlock+memory+consumption&btnG=Search&hl=en&gbv=1/
Hosts~6mb
Addons = ClarityRay defeatable & crippled http://www.businessinsider.com/google-microsoft-amazon-taboola-pay-adblock-plus-to-stop-blocking-their-ads-2015-2/
NoScript tag parses. Hosts block script prior to it!
No 1 addon does as much.
Stacked addons slowup.
ADDONS = EXPLOITABLE https://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11166303&cid=55266729/
APK
P.S.=> APK Hosts File Engine https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&biw=&bih=&q=%22APK+Hosts+File+Engine%22+and+%22start64%22&btnG=Google+Search&gbv=1/
I still won't use it.
Prime is garbage as it is. When I had it, total trash.
You think making it free will make me use it? Lul
The Amazon Prime Service is Advertising
See subject: Unless advertisers like Google strips it out as they did in Android kitkat builds & uBlock still uses TONS more (good to see they shaved it some but still tons more resources used & DOES TONS LESS vs. hosts).
I posted what it was measured @ LONG ago & also provided more links to still SEE THE SAME (uBlock uses more & does less).
In fact, uBlock BLOCKS SECURITY -> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/10/17/ublock_origin_csp_reports/ & Ray Hill uBlock's dev apparently refuses to fix it (it's blocking browser warnings vs. being 'hacked').
Hosts also make uBlock REDUNDANT (& uBlock went so far as to USE HOSTS FILES data - IMITATION = sincerest form of flattery)
APK
P.S.=> Face facts - I'm way, Way, WAY TOO WELL INFORMED for you to EVER "get the better of me" on any front, lol - give up boys... apk
But Amazon does have advertisements, for their shitty shows. They're not all shitty, I'm watching some of them after all, but I never ever want to see any kind of advertisement ever, unless I choose to see it. They also shit up their dashboard to make you see more ads. This is really special: you used to get all your apps if you hit home twice. Now if you hit home twice, you get a message saying to see all your apps, select all apps from apps in the dashboard. If you do that, it shows you the same damn display it used to show you if you hit home twice. So it's not gone, they just took away a useful feature and replaced it with the need to go through the dash so you can be presented with a banner ad.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You are correct that community antenna television (CATV) began by retransmitting the OTA channels. But to me, CATV became "cable" (multichannel pay TV) when CATV operators added channels other than OTA.
Fine with me. I let Amazon Prime expire since there was so little to watch, but if I can watch the few shows I liked (Red Oaks and ... there must have been something) with a few commercials thrown in it's more than worth it. I remember when TV without commercials was PBS so I'll survive.
You are paying with your data.