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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.
Cable television used to be ad-free. Eventually most basic cable networks in the United States introduced ads, on ostensible grounds that neither ads alone nor the retransmission royalty alone could fully fund the production of video works with the quality that subscribers expect. I suspect that NicknameUnavailable's fear is that if the ads on free Prime Video become acceptable, paid Prime Video will end up with ads as well.