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Amazon Developing a Free, Ad-Supported Version of Prime Video: Report (adage.com)

Posted by msmash on from the up-next dept.

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.

6 of 74 comments (clear)

  1. Bad Idea by NicknameUnavailable · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Bad Idea by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 2

      The title itself specifies Ad-supported version of Prime Video, no need to go into panic mode.

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
    2. Re:Bad Idea by NicknameUnavailable · · Score: 2

      That's how it starts, but if you give filthy marketing types an inch they'll never give it back and demand another.

    3. Re:Bad Idea by tepples · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

  2. Re:so long as its optional by crow · · Score: 3, Informative

    Exactly. The fear is that this will go the way of cable TV and eventually they'll migrate from the nice paid ad-free service to an obnoxious paid ad-full service.

    In Amazon's case in particular, I could see them moving the ad-free version to a added subscription on top of Prime, just like the Music Unlimited subscription. I really hope that doesn't happen.

  3. So, basically CABLE TV? by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 2

    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.