Amazon Ratchets Up Enshittifying Prime Video After Public Shrugs At Initial Ads
from the moar-moar-moar dept
In the process of enshittification, it seems that the process will not stop until the customer has been well and truly pissed off. It was merely earlier this year that we discussed Amazon taking its Prime Video offering, after gobbling up a huge number of adopters, and suddenly introducing everyone’s favorite thing about television: advertisements! And, because big platforms like Amazon don’t so much see subscribers as customers so much as hostages, along with the introduction of ads came a subscription tier to avoid them. The point is that Amazon, a top five company by market cap in the world, needs more money. Or, in lieu of that, they need the company’s stock price to rise quarter by quarter in order to satiate those infamous “brunchlords” Karl Bode is always talking about.
When this is the mindset of a company, of course, enshittification will never be a one-step process. The enshittifiers must keep going, incrementally seeing how they can further extract any volume of dollars from its own customers to satisfy the masters. Which is how we get to today’s news, roughly 8 months after Amazon introduced ads into Prime Video, with Prime Video’s next great innovation: moar ads!!!
Speaking to the Financial Times today, Kelly Day, VP of Prime Video International, said that Amazon will offer more Prime Video ad slots to advertisers next year. She didn’t get into specifics but confirmed that Prime Video’s ad load would “ramp up a little bit more into 2025.”
In January, when Amazon launched Prime Video’s ad tier, The Wall Street Journal reported that subscribers would see an average of between two and three-and-a-half minutes of ads per hour. Day told FT today that upon launch, Prime Video with ads was given a “very light ad load,” providing subscribers with a “gentle entry into advertising that has exceeded customers’ expectations in terms of what the ad experience would be like.” The executive pointed out that Prime Video with ads doesn’t show commercials in the middle of content. That could change next year.
Amazon is also adding shoppable ads to Prime Video in 2025, FT confirmed. The new ad format, which includes carousel ads, pause ads, and brand trivia ads—is being sold to advertisers as a new way to attract TV and movie viewing audiences that have become more elusive in the streaming age.
Yes, yes, of course! The best way to make sure that Prime Video remains attractive to customers, thereby making it lucrative for Amazon, is obviously to have greater ad time in content, to inject ads into the middle of content, and to try to make those ads as annoying as possible! Why, this hasn’t been tried since — checks notes –, well, since cable television did the exact same thing! Never mind that people went to streaming in part because they hated this very thing about cable television. Never mind that this new program comes with absolutely zero benefit to the subscriber. And certainly never-the-fuck-mind that you’re going out of your way to talk about how the customer is the frog you’re gently raising the temperature on the pot of water. Yes, this is obviously brilliant.
Now, why is Amazon doing this? Because the frog didn’t complain about the temperature of the water, apparently.
Amazon says Prime Video has 200 million monthly viewers and that subscriber count hasn’t dropped dramatically since it added ads. Similarly, market research firm Antenna told FT in July that a substantial amount of Prime Video subscribers opted out of ads initially, but that number soon “trailed off.” By May, fewer than a 10th of subscribers were paying for an ad-free subscription, Antenna said.
According to Day, subscriber churn in response to the ads has “been much, much less than we anticipated.”
Read that last bit again. Amazon expected all of you to be more pissed off than you were. When you weren’t, they’ve decided to jam even more ads down your slack-jawed, pacified throats. In other words, this reads for all the world like Amazon will not be satisfied until it finds the exact line its customers will draw in the sand.
Thing is, though, by the time Prime Video pisses off a good chunk of its fans, it might be too late to pull back from the brink. And if you think that could never happen, so did cable television.
Filed Under: ads, enshittification, prime video
Companies: amazon
Comments on “Amazon Ratchets Up Enshittifying Prime Video After Public Shrugs At Initial Ads”
Cable TV didn’t come with two-day shipping.
I would wager that the vast majority of Prime subscribers are there for the shipping perks, and Prime Video is a secondary concern at best. I suspect that grants Amazon more leeway to enshittify its streaming service than its competitors that only offer video streaming.
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Personally, I haven’t bothered because I just don’t see the sense in paying $14.99 a month just to cut delivery time from two-three days to one. With my shift pattern, I can just put in the order on a work day so it comes when I’m at home.
Re: Prime Shipping
Truth is that once they put in adds I stopped watching it at all. So I suspect that while the number of Prime Subscribers might not have fallen, the number of people watching may have.
Fortunately, ad blocking in Brave still works on Amazon Video.
Company makes a shitty but only mildly annoying decision
The public: Eh, this is tolerable enough.
*Company proceeds to immediately become infinitely more obnoxious
Give them an inch and they take a..Whole year’s worth of profits, I guess?
Of course the public didn’t complain because the public switched to other streaming services.
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No?
I mean, really, the hell kind of sense does that make? Are you seriously suggesting that Amazon’s “nobody complained so we’re going to do it some more” report didn’t take people cancelling their subscriptions into account?
I’d argue less than 1/10th of people care enough about Prime Video to pay extra. Most are like my dad. He’s been a prime member since the 00s. He already was annoyed by Amazon sticking “rent” titles in their listings. Now? He called me and asked me to add some Amazon show to my jellyfin server because “it’s unwatchable on prime”. He didn’t cancel, he enjoys the free shipping.. He didn’t pay to get rid of ads, he doesnt care enough. Without the jellyfin option, he just would’ve watched something else. He used to watch Prime Video about as much as Netflix. Now? Doesnt even check it anymore.
Nobody is subscribing to Prime for video. The it was a nice to have for most people. Notice they didn’t mention their watch hours metrics? I bet those tanked.
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This is pretty much the case on my end, too. My Prime subscription is all about the shipping perks and such; Prime Video is a bonus that I rarely used even before the adpocalypse.
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I don’t deal with Amazon, but there’s lots of talk online about how to get free shipping without Prime. Are there other important benefits, or are you just doing enough tiny orders to make it worthwhile?
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For a lot of people, free shipping on tiny orders is the primary perk. Once you get used to being able to order some random $8 item and have it show up a day later, you start to treat Amazon like a convenience store.
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The defining characteristic of a convenience store is that customers are vastly over-paying. I’m not sure that’s true of Amazon.
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Not with that attitude it won’t!
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“Nobody is subscribing to Prime for video.”
I initially subscribed to Prime when The Grand Tour started. Now that The Grand Tour has posted its last episode, I’m toying with the idea of cancelling Prime.
Adding advertising was stupid, using the same advertising model that made people run to streaming is insane.
Maybe just maybe the answer to growth & not pissing off the customer is a radical idea…
Not more slots of shit advertising, but fewer ad slots that you charge advertisers way more money to get.
See also: They get how much for a 15 second single run ad during halftime at the Superb Owl??
Idiots.
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I only ever watched a couple of Amazon shows with ads, but one thing I noticed: every single ad was for another Amazon show.
In other words, they weren’t actually making any money off the ads. The ads were only there to annoy customers into paying to get rid of them.
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Uh… do you have evidence of that? In my opinion, the main thing driving people to streaming was the ability to watch any show at any time (and fragmentation is killing this). The much-lower-than-cable cost was important, too.
The lack of advertising was, I think, mostly a fringe benefit. If an ad comes up, one can still mute the thing, go to the bathroom or kitchen; and if some part of the show was missed while gone, just rewind.
Are people really getting pissed off? Annoyed, sure, but actually enraged?
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I will not tolerate ads in my house. If I have a workaround to watch without ads, great. If I can’t watch it without ads, it’s not playing.
Ads on Amazon
Thad would win his wager. And Beer has it exactly right too.
My household only has Prime for the shipping. We set it up on AppleTV and watched a couple of things but it’s been sitting there unused, unwatched and unloved for well over a year because it’s basically effing terrible as a streaming product.
I’d love to see “hours streamed” metrics because, if my household is in any way representative, the numbers would be heading for the drink. Probably selling estimated eyeballs that ain’t actually watching. A fool and his advertising money are soon parted.
As to “customers didn’t complain” you actually have to care about something before you’ll raise the effort to moan. I care so little about the streaming product with the in-ya-face penis-shaped logo that I wouldn’t even notice if it stopped working.
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Batman: Caped Crusader was pretty great.
Though I watched it in Firefox with uBlock Origin, which blocks the ads at no markup.
Sadly I cannot “vote with my feet” and drop my Amazon Prime subscription.
I’ve never had one. Who has the time to watch ALL of the subscription TV stuff?
Pull Bank from the brink(not)
IF amazon annoys me enough that I drop prime, chances are I will never be back.
Its not like I have ever been back to cable 15-20 years after dropping it.
The current ads are not that bad apart from the inability to switch channels for 60 seconds, which I sometimes do, then log back in, re-select the stream and restart the add /sigh.
I’m glad to see the beginning of the end for Amazon.
Amazon has lost me anyway
Having to pay to remove ads was too much. I’m dropping my Prime membership. From now on I’ll wait for a big enough order to accumulate to qualify for free shipping and every year or so, check out their video on the ad free tier.
Canceling
Considering markup prices and this new tactic, were actually canceling Prime this year when it expires.
Good
Prime Video’s “Live TV” section doesn’t even let you save a favorites section (and FreeVee’s design is even worse), so it’s pretty useless anyway.
Prime Video ain’t what it used to be. Prime Music ain’t what it used to be. Of course, Prime Shipping ain’t what it used to be either. Obviously, Prime itself ain’t what it used to be. But, since most have probably opted for the annual membership, it’ll take a year before the full force of what members think of the changes. I cancelled my membership this year. Prime is no longer a value-added service (for members anyway). Video has been getting worse for years, both in what’s offered and the rising cost. Free shipping is easily available if you manage your orders at all. So, save money, drop Prime. There’s just no perkiness left in Prime.
Exaxtly this.
We have Prime for the “free” fast shipping – it pays for itself as much as we order. But Prime Video is our next to last resort for streaming, just above hoisting the flag.