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Amazon Prime Video content to start including ads next year

bbc.co.uk

221–230 of 335 posts

Re: Amazon Prime Video content to start including ads next year

#221
post #48

I flat out do not watch ads. If a platform has ads, I do not watch it full stop. I pay YouTube for no ads. If I lost that option, I would not watch YouTube. Same with all of the other streaming services. Netflix pushed it last year with preview rolls. It was barely acceptable/tolerable. But I will eagerly jettison any service that makes me pay for ads. Heck, I even look askance at people who willingly pay money to un…

Find me an unbranded pair of basketball shorts that will last 10 years, have consistent sizing, and cost less than $20 at an outlet and I’ll gladly buy them. I could gamble on “YAWHOHOMELIFE Men's Running Workout Shorts Training Gym Athletic Joggers Sweat Short Pants Quick Dry Breathable with Zip Pockets”, or pay like $5 more for a little white embroidered check mark and the aforementioned benefits without needing to…

Seriously. I was trying to find socks without a logo. Just simple black ankle socks, made of mostly cotton. IT'S ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE! As you said, the only options are cheaply manufactured stuff online.

Re: Amazon Prime Video content to start including ads next year

#222
post #88

As long as they have an add free option for a reasonable price I’m fine with it. It seems likely that with the money they are spending on shows streaming isn’t currently profitable. Looks like $2.99 extra a month gets you no ads.

At some point advertisers are going to say they don’t want to reach people who don’t pay the $2.99, and eventually the ad-free tier will become “limited ads”. Why would Amazon leave all that money on the table? Even PBS has about a minute and a half of “major corporate funders” ads on their nightly news.

And at that point I cancel and find other ways to get the content ad-free. Maybe I can buy shows I like individually on Apple TV, or I don't watch them. I have a hard no ads policy.

Re: Amazon Prime Video content to start including ads next year

#223
post #79
post #48

I flat out do not watch ads. If a platform has ads, I do not watch it full stop. I pay YouTube for no ads. If I lost that option, I would not watch YouTube. Same with all of the other streaming services. Netflix pushed it last year with preview rolls. It was barely acceptable/tolerable. But I will eagerly jettison any service that makes me pay for ads. Heck, I even look askance at people who willingly pay money to un…

I wear some brands, but I buy them at the discount/clearance store, I'm not directly looking at buying specific brands, most of the time. However, in the case of some brands (e.g. Vans in my case) I just... genuinely enjoy their stuff. Is it that weird to have preferences?

Do Vans have logos? I wear a pair of white Vans in Summer.

Re: Amazon Prime Video content to start including ads next year

#224
We don't need to disrupt an industry. We need to disrupt the fact that the global economy is set up to need continuous exponential growth or the whole thing collapses. It reached the point of diminishing returns long ago and is actively killing us at this point yet so many people, here especially, will deny that even as they suffocate.

Re: Amazon Prime Video content to start including ads next year

#225
post #196

Amazon Prime Video spent 16 billion dollars on content last year and it's the worst of all the major streaming platform when it comes to original programming. In the last year, their big budget bombs: - Wheel of Time barely watchable CW quality TV - Lord of the Rings oh my gosh level bad - Citadel unwatchable it's so bad I will admit they do have some OK recent content. The Peripheral was entertaining, for example. B…

Those should have all been runaway hits. WoT and LOTR especially, all they had to do was stick to what made it successful in the first place.

Instead Rand was sidelined, they made me hate Galadriel, et al.

I can't imagine paying millions for a recipe and then throwing it out because I think I know better.

Re: Amazon Prime Video content to start including ads next year

#226

I'm willing to buy Blu-Rays. I'm also willing to stop watching "content" altogether. I'm already hating the experience of the forced unskippable ads for Paramount shows that play at the beginning (AT MAX VOLUME) of every Paramount+ channel stream (Star Trek... sigh). If I have to watch ads like regular network TV, which I now find unwatchable, I'd just have to do without.

Weirdly, I'm able to skip Paramount's pre-roll ads on Xbox, but not on their iPhone app. Anyway, I've heard Paramount's streaming service isn't doing so well[1], so with any luck they will give up and go back to Netflix. [1] https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/paramount-just-quit-stre...

So long as they don't give up and try to get a tax write-off by just black-holing all those shows instead like some other studios did...

Re: Amazon Prime Video content to start including ads next year

#227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You ignored the first paragraph of the article that says you can pay for an ad-free option, which would qualify as “raising prices moderately” to me. Odds are near 100% that Amazon has been running Prime Video at a loss since it started. They spent $16B on content last year. They can stop producing so much content or they can find ways to make more money. Either way people will snark about how greedy they are for not…

Yeah, people get so weird about this stuff. It's TV shows, not food and water. There should be no obligation for anyone to produce and distribute this stuff at a loss. Price increases are fine. Inevitable, really. I just really hope that in the long term we'll get to keep the month-to-month model and the "pay more for no ads" model.

Low interest rates created an exceptionally entitled consumer mindset. It's been interesting to watch it break over the last year.

Re: Amazon Prime Video content to start including ads next year

#228
post #69

Imagine a world where a guy worth over 150 billion dollars who owns a company worth over a trillion dollars and has a quasi-monopoly over the internet is in such desperate need of more money to the point where he's going to put advertising on his video platform, even though people already pay for the platform. Instead of raising prices moderately, or putting better content on the platform, they decide to instead put…

> quasi-monopoly AKA, not a monopoly. Monopoly is such a funny buzzword to me because it's both wildly misused and completely misunderstood to be an inherently bad thing. In reality, there is rarely a true monopoly and the only bad thing about them is that they enable anti-competitive behavior and that's the thing that's illegal and bad. Amazon "quasi-monopoly" comes from having the best service. Great service is goo…

No true Scotsman argument aside, anti-competitive practices by very powerful firms are a bad thing, even if the firm got the market power because they have or had the best product.

Re: Amazon Prime Video content to start including ads next year

#229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if this were the case (it's not), there's still a time cost - I have to find the brand without the logo that's the same quality. I buy athletic shorts maybe once every 2-3 years almost always on Black Friday. I know Nike shorts will be high quality, and I know they'll fit. Wading through the many non-logo brands, trying them on, returning the ones that are bad, etc. might take me several hours to save tens of do…

Learn to recognize quality by sight, particularly by stitching and materials, not logo. Logos are not emblematic of quality, but of good marketing (shoes aside - Nike makes good sneakers).

Yeah, any truly talented couturier can simply lick the monitor to get a sense of the product they're looking at.

Re: Amazon Prime Video content to start including ads next year

#230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Finland. My favorite place to get sportswear and just daily wear is H&M. No logos. My favorite design house is Makia. Really amazing stuff. https://makia.com/ but if it has a big-assed Makia logo I don't buy it. When I lived in New York there were so many options it was hard to choose, but I'd check out used clothing boutiques for fun things.

FWIW, in the US, H&M is known for fast-fashion, garbage-tier clothing. I've heard the brand is better outside the US, though.

If I lived in the US in a place that didn't have many good stores around I'd buy from retailers online and try out different things. I've had luck with https://www.uniqlo.com
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