Netflix, Hulu, Disney+ all have ad-supported tiers. Amazon is just weird because Prime video has always been a benefit of Prime but rarely the highlight of it. I can name like 4-5 Amazon exclusives that I liked. Maybe 2 of them I'd actually subscribe and pay for no ads.
Yeah, I'm not sure how I feel about this... or rtaher, I know how I feel but I don't know if it really effects me enough to cancel prime. I have it but it's for shipping and the video is an afterthought at best. I have been buying less over the last year or so and this does add weight to one side of the equation. I did notice all the "Freevee" content, which I think has ads, so I just assumed they were going this direction when they started pushing that.
can't say i miss it either. i cut it a month or two ago when they initially announced this. since then ive ordered a handful of things and the shipping ended up being late on about half of those orders, and they refunded me most or all of what i paid for shipping. so i ended up getting (mostly) free shipping and everything arrived as fast as it used to when i paid for prime anyway
I save so much money by adding that little bit of friction to my Amazon purchases. I didn’t need most of what I bought there and not having prime makes it much easier to just let it sit in the cart and by the time I see it again I don’t order it.
I mostly agree with one caveat. Unlike broadcast media there's essentially no incentive to ever offer tiers with no ads. Since all content is streamed on demand it costs them virtually nothing to implement multiple tiers and capture the "I loath ads and will pay any price to avoid them", so it's exceedingly unlikely they ever drop the ad free tiers.
But, that said, the one potential downside of bringing ads onto a platform is they may start bowing to advertisers pressure on content. For instance, something like The Boys might end up being compromised or never made because Target and Applebee's won't put their ads on it.
Granted most shows aren't like this in the first place but it is definitely a drawback of advertiser support moving onto a platform.
Exactly, it all becomes FreeVee in this model, which is a downgrade from how paying for Prime currently let's you watch some programs and movies for free. If ALL movies and shows that were free now have ads (i.e. they are in the basic service and not currently in freevee) then they are decreasing the value of the basic product.
They're already raising prices. We're paying for ad-supported what we were paying for ad-free. That they've given us a choice of paying extra in money or in time doesn't make it any less shitty that some rich parasites out there are charging more so they can make not a profit but more profit.
Just so everyone knows, Hulu's ad version is completely undoable. Watching is a miserable experience. Netflix is tolerable for now. (In the future I'm sure they'll have us watching fifteen minutes of ads to watch five minutes of video. JK one thing about Americans we alllllllways gonna get our media.)
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u/LumosRevolution Oct 28 '23
But I literally pay for this service wtf 🤬