Prime Video Sets Start Date for the Addition of Commercial Breaks
Commercials are coming soon to Prime Video.
Amazon’s streaming service is going to start including ad breaks during movies and TV shows, it was announced back in September. But now we have an exact date for when the ads will be… added: Monday, Jan. 29, 2024.
The change will first take effect in the U.S., the UK, Germany and Canada, followed by France, Italy, Spain, Mexico and Australia later in the year.
“This change will allow us to continue investing in compelling content and keep increasing that investment over a long period of time,” the streamer said in a message to subscribers, adding: “We aim to have meaningfully fewer ads than linear TV and other streaming TV providers.”
Those who wish to maintain an ad-free viewing experience will have to pay an additional $2.99 per month (sign up here), on top of their annual Prime subscription cost of $139.
Prime Video already features commercial breaks during Thursday Night Football — but this will be the first time subscribers are subjected to ads during original series like The Boys, Reacher and The Wheel of Time.
Content that is rented or purchased will not be affected/feature ads.
Alas, the change is part of an industry-wide trend. Disney+, Hulu, Max, Netflix, Paramount+ and Peacock already offer ad-supported tiers at a reduced rate.
Will you cough up an additional three bucks to keep Prime Video ad-free? Let us know in Comments.
Not happy.
Given that they just raised the price of Prime and certainly aren’t going to decrease the cost with these commercials (at least other streamers with commercials presented it as a bargain) , this is a hard pill to swallow. I will have to really think about the worth of Prime now.
[COMMENT REMOVED DUE TO USE OF MULTIPLE USER NAMES]
Well I used to have Business Prime Germany and Business Prime Sweden, they’ve now started increasing the shipping costs from Germany to Sweden and stopped combining the shipping price so I think that news will be the end of me paying for Business Prime, more fool them.
I wonder how long it’ll be until cord cutters realize that streaming stands to become just as expensive as cable but with even less reliability. We dropped Netflix when they raised their rates and perhaps the time will come with Amazon as well.
I don’t understand cord cutting. You can’t have an app without verifying that you pay for some kind of satellite or cable.
You do know that “apps” offer stand-alone subscriptions that do not require cable, correct?
None of the subscription bases streamers require a subscription to satellite or cable. I haven’t had satellite or cable in years.
You need to pay for some sort of internet service in order to use the services.
and internet service alone has skyrocketed in the past few years. it used to be if you only wanted internet, it was cheap. not anymore.
Cord cutting refers to people canceling cable, or similar services, that offer tv programming. It does not refer to internet services. It became popular at the start of streaming popularity when people canceled their cable in favor of services, such as Netflix and Hulu. It doesn’t literally mean canceling anything with a cable. We’d all have to also cancel our electricity and stop using anything with a plug if that were the case.
I think he is referring to individual channels on cable tv with corresponding apps that are not a streaming service per se (ex. TBS). You sign in using cable credentials. Great if theres a channel you like, but less value. Unless you’re using your grandparents passwords. ;)
Not everyone is tech savvy. You can’t use an app without an internet connection like broadband, but you don’t need satellite or cable. There are apps, such as Max, that are no extra charge if you verify that you have a cable provider.
Yes, you can. There are some apps that you can sign into with your cable service username and password. There are some that are stand alone where you simply pay for the app. Some have both. For example, Hallmark has an app that you have to sign into with your cable provider to watch live channels. But, they also have the stand alone app, Hallmark Movies Now, that you can pay a monthly fee to watch movies, but not live TV. However, the Peacock app also has access to live Hallmark Channels and some on demand movies and shows. So, I get my Hallmark fix through my Peacock subscription. But, some services, such as Netflix and Hulu have nothing to do with any cable services and you just pay for the app and you can’t sign into them with your cable company login info.
The majority of streaming options allow you to pay for a subscription that’s not tied to a cable package.
However, it seems like the you are coming across the few that still require an actual cable package subscription to access. Yes they still exist, but they are getting rarer and rarer.
You cut the cord.
That’s simple.
So they brought back broadcast TV.
It was inevitable and was the plan all along. Most streamers are not yet profitable and are just trying to kill off cable tablevision. For years now, people have been upset with cable because people who don’t watch sports still have to pay for the expensive sports channels and people who don’t watch home and garden channels still have to pay for them. Networks were bolstered by this setup of getting money from people not even watching their content.
So along came streaming, which gave people a better chance to pick and choose what they pay for. Throw in ad-free and limited-ad experiences and they started competing well against cable and have driven down cable subscriptions at least 25% in the last 10 years. This will only continue and will likely fall off a cliff when ESPN starts their stand-alone service, since live sports is one of the things keeping cable on life support.
Now that the streamers see blood in the water for cable, they’re starting in on the next phase of the plan. When they no longer have to compete against cable, they will all raise their prices significantly to make up for the fact that those non-sports watchers are no longer paying for sports content, etc. And we will end up exactly where we started, paying as much for content as we started out with. The only difference is that we won’t have access to the content we don’t normally watch like we did with cable.
Amazon is very profitable. And they don’t pay their fair share of taxes.
We have to pay with ours for things like the extra wear and tear on our roads from their personal delivery fleet for one example.
Hulu is the most outrageous one in terms of price and is first in line to be cancelled.
THIS so much! We’re basically paying for maintaining these companies’ huge crazy profit margins and have additional social service burdens added due to their practices, exactly like the one you mentioned with the roads etc.
The personal delivery fleet (that today) still uses gas and pays gas taxes for road upkeep?
No. The electric fleet, that they initiated a substantial investment in with Rivian and the only Amazon delivery vans that I see in my State.
States are becoming savvy now and are/will be charging EV owners an annual fee for using the roads. That’ll include Amazon. You’ll just have to pay more for their products.
I can’t speak for all states. But, I drive a hybrid and I have had to pay an extra $100 in registration fees compared to regular cars for the last few years. It’s described as being needed because hybrid drivers use less gasoline and therefore are not paying as much in taxes on gas purchases. Trust me, there are fees being applied to those who drive hybrids or electric vehicles.
You’re right Mega. And there’s something else that Amazon doesn’t pay when it comes to taxes. When you are an employee for a Company you receive a W-2 and 7.65% of your paycheck each payday goes towards Social Security and Medicare. Now what most people don’t know is, your Employer matches that 7.65% dollar for dollar.
Now here’s the Catch-22. If you’re a delivery driver for Amazon and drive your own car, you’re not an employee. You’re considered an Independent Contractor or Self Employed. Therefore you are both, the Employer as well as the Employee. So you work for you. Therefore you have to pay the Employee’s 7.65% and the Employers 7.65% instead of Amazon. That totals 15.3% of your income goes to Social Security and Medicare instead of just 7.65%. So that’s why the Delivery Drivers are not Amazon Employees.
That is a bad example. The government did this to trick people into thinking they are getting half of their SS taxes for free, so they wouldn’t complain about high SS taxes. This is just moving money around. Your wages have been reduced to cover the employer’s portion of the SS taxes. There is no free lunch.
Except we use to get TV for free! Yeah we had commercials and less to choose from but sometimes I think that wasn’t so bad.
TV used to be entirely free for viewers because the viewers weren’t the TV networks’ customers. The advertisers were. The viewers were the selling point for the advertisers. Of course the advertisers then passed as much of the cost of advertising as they could onto their direct customers, many of whom were those same TV viewers.
Broadcast TV is still entirely free. When I “cut the cord” years ago, I got a digital antenna and subscribed to Hulu so I could stream my shows I was no longer recording on DVR. That was many years ago now, but I still have a digital antenna and watch live tv for free often.
You can still get the basic networks free over the air if you have an antennae.
Except now we get to pay for it
There’s already commercial breaks in some shows such as falcon Crest and la law. Just another way to make a few more dollars.
Those shows are offered through FreeVee, which is available with and without a Prime subscription because they are ad-supported. The new plan is to include ads with Prime-exclusive content.
I’m a little irritated, but given that I bought Prime just for for the subscription and save services and free two-day shipping (and the Prime video was a bonus), I’ll suffer the ads.
That’s my feelings on it. There’s no point in paying extra for something that I personally use the least; I’ll suffer through the ads.
We ignore ignore all commercials, although my dog does bark at any animals that might appear in them. I will not pay more.
Hmmmm, very irritating to say the least! And correcting your question-it’s not an additional $3. It’s another $3/ month, and the point of it all! Yes so I’ll be paying an exorbitant amount now to watch basically broadcast tv.
Because Amazon doesn’t already make enough money.
You have to remember though that Amazon isn’t just one company but multiple companies under one parent company. The streaming arm like all streaming companies is spending billions more than they bring in so is being subsidised by the other parts of Amazon.
The problem was Netflix thought they could come in, buy rights for cheap, charge a low price and get enough customers to make a big profit. They didn’t realise how they would damage every other revenue stream thus see studios charge more for the rights, then more and more services to launch pushing rights costs up further, then having to combat that with spending on original content, that then to cause production costs to rise across the board as everyone tried to make shows that stood out and customers just to be hesitant to price increases and them having trouble keeping people to subscribe every month without having more and more originals (and even then seeing people subbing to one, the cancelling and subbing to the next etc etc)
People hated cable as they thought it was expensive but ultimately it was always going to be the cheapest way for customers to get everything while ensuing everyone making content made money. I actually think that’s where we will end up with streaming. We will all pay a monthly fee for basically all live channels broadcasting across the internet and all the SVOD services with each SVOD getting less than they currently get off each user but getting something from every subscriber even if they don’t watch anything on one service so wouldn’t choose to subscribe (And it gives content an easier time to be discovered because I suspect everything will be accessible from a unified menu as well as browsing the app much like on AppleTV or in the UK how Sky TV intergrates many streaming services into their live tv platform so you might come across a show on a service you wouldn’t go and check normally) because as it is every streaming service is going to go bust within 10 years
blah blah blah
GREED….. Plan and simple! What does Prime really have to offer anyway. With that said, I understand about the commercials for TNF, at least those commercials are filler for the games and they are entertaining.
They just went up on the yearly plan now they want an additional $2.99 month for ppl who have the yearly plan. Ridiculous.
Not happy to see this. Will have to give it some thought. As another person said there’s no bargain pricing and with the big increase already to Prime it’s a double whammy!
I think I see a return to cable if all these steaming service are going to raise rates just to get ad free services, that was part of the draw to subscribers to not have commercials.
Except most of the content worth watching has moved to the streamers.
What Brian R said, plus being able to choose when to watch stuff without having to set some kind of DVR…
At least with a DVR you can fast forward through commercials.
If they are going to start taking away perks, maybe I don’t need Prime as much as I thought I did. What’s motivating this, is Amazon in trouble financially or are they just trying to keep up with the Jones?
That’s what I want to know. Like are y’all hurting for money that badly or are you just falling in line like a sheep with the rest of them
They are not hurting for money in the-traditional sense. It’s all about the “share holders” getting more dividends this year than last. And this is true of every “publicly” owned company. The CEO’s of these large companies, in the earnings reports, used to talk about what they were going to do for their customers in the coming year (quarter, etc). But if you listen closely now, all they really talk about is “shareholder value” and what they are doing to increase it. Big business REALLY is big business now—IF you own shares in any “publicly owned” (a misnomer if there ever was one) corporation.
They are passing the costs to pay their actors and writers more onto the consumer instead of the CEO’s unfortunately just like all the streamers
This is ridiculous. I think I’m done with Prime. $140 is a lot and it now being $176/year… I’ll just wait a few extra days for my packages. They only have a couple of series worth watching anyway.
I wish they would just let us buy/rent the shows we want. I have a few I can get with shipping credits or a little money, but the big name new shows you have to get Prime to see at all.
(I have a legacy account from back when you could add people to your Prime account–I was one of someone’s addons so I have all the Prime shipping perks but I can’t just watch any show I want w/o paying for a primary Prime account. I keep getting emails saying I have Prime music but I don’t think I actually have that, either.)
I have the same plan as you and get the same erroneous emails. I think Amazon forgot we exist, but I do appreciate the free shipping and slow shipping digital credits.
Amazon has both Amazon Music Prime and Amazon Music Unlimited… you do get the Prime one included free with a Prime subscription but its catalog is smaller than the “Unlimited” one, which you would have to pay extra for. Search: “What Are the Differences Between the Amazon Music Subscriptions?” and you’ll find a page that breaks it down with what you get with prime vs unlimited.
That’s good to know, but with the legacy free Prime through friends or family, you only get free shipping and can also order from Amazon Fresh. No free music or access to free Prime TV and movies.
Just greedy. Over a quarter of older movies on prime they want you to rent. Now on top of prime rate of 151 including tax they want another 36 dollars a year. Greedy
I just want one of these companies to admit that the streaming model has been an absolute failure. I’m this close to just going back to regular cable.
I wouldn’t call streaming a failure. Just look at Netflix, which has over 230 million subscribers. Netflix also seems to dominate the Nielsen Streaming every single week. Most of the shows I watch are on streaming services. Heck, this Fall, every single thing I plan on watching will be on streaming (except for The Walking Dead’s Daryl Dixon, which I watch on AMC).
Yes, Lisa, because they are all trying to make their streaming platforms the most successful ones, but it’s not profitable. Which is why they keep canceling shows, removing them off their platform and raising the prices. That’s why they won’t come to an agreement on the strike because if they have to pay people more they will lose even more money.
So yes, it is a failure because they all thought they would succeed.
Cable is still more expensive mostly due to the need for set top boxes unless you only have 1 TV.
Sorry, but I’m not paying an extra $2.99 per month for something I watch infrequently at best.
Yes I will!! I HATE the ASININE advertising that goes on today!!
I will not pay for ad free tv. The one reason I would watch Prime Video is because of no commercials. So now they are becoming a regular TV provider. I guess it was a matter of time. Even the regular stations will show a few shows then put them on their streaming channels such as Paramount or Peacock. When you start adding the streaming services up it starts to look like cable. Disney+ & Hulu are raising their prices too!
The richest man in the world needs more money. SMDH
You realise Elon Musk doesn’t own Amazon?
So someone didn’t pay attention that Jeff Bezos lost the title in 2021… YOU didn’t pay attention that Elon Musk lost it this year to Bernard Arnault of France. Ron’s point is still clear; none of these three men need more money (or the other richest folks just below them either).
True, but Jeff Bezos is the third richest man in the world. What’s $75 billion, give or take?
It already infuriates me that on top of paying monthly fees for Prime, some shows are rent or buy only. Now we’re supposed to pay more to have commercial-free viewing.
I’m not sure I’ll keep my subscription.
No. I will not pay extra for ad free.
I don’t watch it enough to pay any more.
I think streaming will eventually price itself out. Things are expensive enough without adding anymore on to the backs of average Americans.
NO!!!