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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.
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 watch Prime Video all the time. There are no injected ads.
Did you save the text of the reply in which you were "politely told off" when you complained about the trailers shown when Amazon Primee Video opens?
So can they do the free shipping thing too? Amazon can chuck a few flyers in the box with your stuff.
So, they don't inject ads.
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.
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
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 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
This is their reply:
Hello ---,
First of all, please accept my sincere apologies for the inconvenience caused to you thus far. I do understand how frustrating this must have been to you. We value our customers' trust above all else--it is the foundation upon which Amazon.com was built.
However, as your mail reached my desk, I would love to put in my every effort possible to provide you with the best resolution. Therefore, to help you with this issue, I've forwarded your comments as a feedback to our Amazon Prime Video team so, that they can take necessary steps in order to improve our services and features and in order to not disappoint privileged customers like you, as happened in your case.
Thank you for letting us know what you want from Amazon Prime Videos. The best service delivery comes from a feedback provided by a valuable customer like you. I appreciate your thoughts, and I've passed your suggestion along to my higher authorities on Top Priority. Also as, I've forwarded your comments to our development team, they will definitely consider my feedback request, start working on it. I request you to understand my limitations regarding the issue.
We want to thank you for your patronage and for bringing these concerns to our attention. I’m truly sorry for the trouble caused in this case, and I hope you'll give us another chance in the future to show our dedication. I believe, you would appreciate my effort in sharing genuine information with you.
Thank you for understanding my limitations regarding this issue as a Loyal Amazon Customer. I hope that you will honor us with another opportunity, to prove the quality of our service to you in the future as we look forward to seeing you again soon.
We'd appreciate your feedback. Please use the buttons below to vote about your experience today.
Best regards,
---
Amazon.com
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.'"
I tried the 30 day free trial, in New Zealand. I could only find 1 tv show that it would allow me to watch. Nothing else was viewable in my location. The "thousands of tv shows and movies" is all false advertising as far as I can see. They could at least add a search filter to show only content available in my country, I could not find that option anywhere.
Movie rental prices weren't too impressive, from the few I looked up, but then I didn't try renting one because I couldn't tell if I would be allowed to view it in my location either.
If I had a DeLorean... I would probably only drive it from time to time.
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.