Prime Video subs will soon see ads for Amazon products when they hit pause

The enshitification continues.

Cancel your sub and don’t renew it. This shit will only continue getting worse if people continue paying for it

I actually get Prime TV series from the high seas even though I'm subscribed to Prime. It's simply better UX this way.

It is insane to me how piracy is making a comeback because decision makers forgot Gabe's lesson

I'm one of the people that canceled when they announced they were going to be putting ads in prime. I'm doing just fine without it.

Jesus christ do these people not understand what “Pause” means? It means my roommate just walked in and wants to discuss something. It means we’re looking at the freeze frame to see some aspect of the shot. It means the same damned collection of events should happen any time a “Pause” control’s been triggered since the invention of playback.

Why are the UX people not fighting them on this? Why does design have to be about breaking everything these days?

Yes. Because when I pause to discuss a show I'm watching with someone, or to otherwise pay attention to something else for a moment, for some other sound and video to play is exactly what I want.

This makes literally no sense. The whole point of pausing, is that it's something you do right before you turn your attention away, and that's when they want to show you ads?

Either these ads won't work, because no-one will look at them, or they will defeat the point of pausing, annoying the living shit out of your users. It's a lose-lose for everyone involved. Including the advertisers.

usenet, indexer, sonarr, sabnzbd

This deal keeps getting worse all the time.

There's an easy solution for that.

Cancel it. Stop buying things from Amazon. Stop giving that awful company your money.

Our research shows that we can fill up to 80% of the visual field with ads before we induce seizures!

Any streaming service that tries to combine ads+sub is just as greedy as cable TV and I can't support that kind of shitty business practice. Ads free or sub no ads. Cancelled each service as they rolled out that trash. Currently only subbed to Criterion and thinking of resubbing to Shudder.

Once. It'll better be one hell of an ad because it will lose them my subscription. I stopped watching television back in the late 90s because of all the ads, before even I had internet to watch pirated media. I don't wear clothes with too visible logos. Just saying to illustrate how this ain't an empty threat.

Losing a single customer probably doesn't matter to them. But I hope Im not the only one?

Just cancelled my prime today. I don't watch the video, just use it for delivery

It said "But you've save €247 with your prime account since the start!"

Over the last six years I've paid about €270 for the prime subscription

Fuck off Amazon

Why even pay subscription for something if you're still gonna see ads?

In this case, piracy will give you a better experience tham actually paying for the service

Yo ho, yo ho....

Just imagine. If you install Amazon video on an external streaming device and hook it up to a new Roku TV, you could get the pleasure of looking at multiple layers of Pause screen ads.

Radarr and Sonarr. Look them up and stop giving Amazon money.

After almost 20 years as a Prime subscriber I unsubscribed about a week ago. It was the ads, I put up with a lot of nonsense over the years but the ads were the final insult.

I'm not paying full streaming service prices for a service with ads.

When Amazon thinks "sub" means "submissive" rather than "subscriber"

Spending all that time and money setting up my homeserver is looking better and better every day...

Adverts are inevitable, these companies cannot help themselves. The temptation to double dip... A subscription from stupid saps and money from advertising. Soon the ads will creep into the other subscription tiers.

Piracy and ad blocking is the only escape.

Netflix already does this. They all will just copy each other. Eventually ads will come for the top tier levels too. Enough is never quite enough for these people.

I've been getting a lot of mileage from this.

I have prime. I torrent their content anyway as they don’t play nice with vpn.

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I'm proud to say I pirated the fallout show

Inb4 "the pirates are destroying the industry"

Prime video could absolutely get worse, don't kid yourself.

I'm surprised they think this is useful... if I've paused a video it's because I'm answering the phone or front door, making a coffee, going for a shit etc... I'm almost never going to see these ads 🤷🏻‍♂️

Wow, what happened to paying for things supporting the product and not needing ads?

I unsubbed from prime last year once the ads were announced on prime video.

There's no reason to have it anymore imo.

A VPN sub is like $40 a year and that lets me get any media I want.

Free Shipping without prime starts at orders over $35. Who doesn't spend at least $35 in 2024?

Further justifying my commitment to avoiding Prime at all costs.

Looking more like the right decision i made to drop prime last year

I’ll stay subbed but I wont be seeing the ads, matey.

Yeah I don't use prime video but as soon as I saw they were going to add ads, that opens the door for them to make their app shitty as hell.

Glad I dropped prime 1.5 years ago. I'll never pay monthly for something with ads. If I pay monthly for software, it better treat me like royalty.

Ill just give the Amazon products that are advertised 1 star reviews. Enough people start doing that maybe we can do what helldiver did.

Wait... I already now get annoying ads in the middle of watching a show. Now they want to add more ads to Prime Video? That's absolutely ridiculous.

I dont like it, but I can deal with ads while paused. But its also just an entry point for them to see how much they can sneak it. Its becoming cable TV all over again, with ads making their way in, despite paying for the service.

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Not surprised at all lol I am tempted to just start using Jellyfin and shop from sites that don't do this to their "premium" users.

Did they make a deal with VLC player?

This is the best summary I could come up with:

In Prime Video's case, pausing the program will bring up "a translucent ad featuring brand messaging and imagery, along with an 'Add to Cart' and 'Learn More'" overlay, per Amazon.

On the other hand, Amazon has not released research publicly on how much constant ad viewing can impact the user experience or interest in a streaming service.

Still, Amazon claimed today that Prime Video ads reach an average of 200 million people monthly.

The Hub Entertainment Media survey claims that Amazon has a higher ad-based to ad-free ratio of subscribers than all other video streaming services examined, including Netflix, Max, and Hulu.

Like all streamers, Amazon is toeing a fine line between using ads to boost the average revenue it makes per user and aggravating subscribers to the point of cancellation.

Amazon is already facing a lawsuit regarding ads on Prime Video that seeks class-action certification and was filed by people who purchased annual subscriptions.

The original article contains 714 words, the summary contains 155 words. Saved 78%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Did everyone not just pirate this series? It seems like Game of Thrones level pirate content, who would pay for that.

Yeah I already know about this. Also as a long time prime subscriber we have had ads longer than you'd expect. It first started as ads for Amazon products and also previews for other Amazon shows. It doesn't surprise me that there are pause screen ads now like other streaming services.

Will we? 🏴‍☠️

If I'm being honest, I can handle an ad in my pause menu as long as it doesn't interfere with the rest of operating the device. If I can unpause and reach the closed captioning or audio menu, fine, whatever. What really gets my goat is pre-roll and mid-roll ads. Can't stand them.

https://i.imgur.com/3EQnww7.jpeg

Mmhmmm.

Hold on, I gotta watch a Charmin commercial before my toilet 🚽 will flush for me....you know, my toilet that I purchased for my restroom. ....it's coming, laugh now but you, know it! Cha-cha-cha! Charmin!

Amazon Prime is absolute dogshit anyway. Fallout wasn’t even that good, I don’t know why it got such a warm reception. Probably because people had such low hopes for it. Rings of Power was a billion dollar investment and only 30% of people finished the whole series.

im pretty sure I have already seen this.

I wish the high seas had better quality. So much isn't available in 4k at least in the waters I've checked out.

Well, then are not going to see my money anymore, that's for sure.

Soon as I get low voltage wiring completed in my home, I'm going back to being a pirate, matey.

Acceptable.