season 3 will have ads

[Ralph]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66887717

[HeavyHalfMoonBlade]

Ouch. In the Netherlands we still have a very young Amazon site, for years it was only for Kindle content. Prime is €3 a month and apparently no plans for ads at the moment either. 

[mogi68]

Ads don't really bother me, gives me a chance to get up and grab more honeycakes without missing anything

[Pandemonium]

hey if ads give them less of an excuse to cancel after season 3 then I am all for it.   Pretty much every streaming service will have ads now.  They pretty much have to, especially with new residual agreements that will happen with the actors and writers unions

[Agitel]

Sigh... remember when streaming was liberating in getting away from cable?

[Cipher]

Use the revenue to hire different writers.

 

Edit: NGL S2E6 and the E7 teaser give me hope for the future. 

Edited September 23, 2023 by Cipher

[VirusKiller]

14 hours ago, Pandemonium said:

hey if ads give them less of an excuse to cancel after season 3 then I am all for it

 

Agreed. ATM, any show short of perfect ratings seems to get canned.

[BookMattBetterThanShow]

Saw they were going to charge 2.99 month extra for ad free, I hate ads, so $36 US dollars more a year  for no ads is the way I will go.

[Samt]

The no ads incentive structure is weird anyways.  They don’t really make more by getting existing subscribers to watch more, so the incentive to create more good content isn’t there as much.  Expensive flagship content is hard to justify unless you can show that it is bringing in actual new subscribers.  Ads are good because it means that a show can justify its budget simply by selling more ad impressions, even if only existing subscribers are watching.

[Windigo]

15 hours ago, Agitel said:

Sigh... remember when streaming was liberating in getting away from cable?

I remember when cable was liberating in getting away from limited network availability and ad's 

[Windigo]

12 minutes ago, Samt said:

The no ads incentive structure is weird anyways.  They don’t really make more by getting existing subscribers to watch more, so the incentive to create more good content isn’t there as much.  Expensive flagship content is hard to justify unless you can show that it is bringing in actual new subscribers.  Ads are good because it means that a show can justify its budget simply by selling more ad impressions, even if only existing subscribers are watching.

True, right now streaming only needs one or 2 quality shows at a time to get/keep subscribers. WoT is a great example, 8 episodes every 1-2 years for the subscribers. 
If it is really popular there would be incentive for more episodes to increase ad revenue on popular shows. 
I only hope that the time for ads does not take away from the length of episodes. 
 

[Scarloc99]

There is a real positive to adverts on streaming services, it forces those streaming services to publish real numbers about viewing figures, viewing habits and means we get real metrics not just PR bumpf. Those figures have to be independently reviewed and confirmed by one of the accredited agencies, Nielson is the best known.

The main reason for this is that advertisers have no idea how much an advert slot is worth to them if they don't know who is viewing it, and in what numbers. So adverts in streaming services mean we will start seeing who is watching as well as how many, the demo groups (age range), gender, etc. This then allows Coca Cola to decide that yes, WOT is worth putting money into becaus it captures that 18-25 demo group they want to target. 

Also the ads for streaming services will not be in the middle, the use case will be to force the viewer to watch them before they can start the show. 

 

[Scarloc99]

20 hours ago, Windigo said:

True, right now streaming only needs one or 2 quality shows at a time to get/keep subscribers. WoT is a great example, 8 episodes every 1-2 years for the subscribers. 
If it is really popular there would be incentive for more episodes to increase ad revenue on popular shows. 
I only hope that the time for ads does not take away from the length of episodes. 
 

The Amazon model is totally different to all other streaming services, you are not paying for Amazon Prime, you are paying for free shipping and postage, that was the original model for Prime membership, they just tagged the TV shows onto that as an extra to give more incentive to be a prime member. 

[Scarloc99]

20 hours ago, BookMattBetterThanShow said:

Saw they were going to charge 2.99 month extra for ad free, I hate ads, so $36 US dollars more a year  for no ads is the way I will go.

So the way I currently see it Amazon TV is free to me, I was paying for Prime for the free shipping and postage long before I was even thinking about watching amazon prime on TV, so 2.99 a month means that Amazon is the cheapest of the online streaming services that is out there right now. 

[Windigo]

1 hour ago, Scarloc99 said:

So the way I currently see it Amazon TV is free to me, I was paying for Prime for the free shipping and postage long before I was even thinking about watching amazon prime on TV, so 2.99 a month means that Amazon is the cheapest of the online streaming services that is out there right now. 

True, but then before they added Prime Video I was paying $49 a year for Prime free shipping, as they added stuff to it and it went up I just accepted it for the additional content. 
I will see if I want the ad free or not once that comes out, it will depend on how many ads and how often.

 

[Pandemonium]

Prime has gotten to the point where they have to use ads without drastically increasing annual subscription costs.  

 

I abhor live sports being forced into Prime TV, especially for such a terrible product as Thursday night football.  I really hope they make live sports an additional fee in the future so other users don't have to subsidize it.  The reason I got rid of my cable is because ESPN bloats the bill so high, and the last thing I want to do is passively contribute to NFL quarterbacks making $50 million per year.

[Scarloc99]

15 hours ago, Pandemonium said:

Prime has gotten to the point where they have to use ads without drastically increasing annual subscription costs.  

 

I abhor live sports being forced into Prime TV, especially for such a terrible product as Thursday night football.  I really hope they make live sports an additional fee in the future so other users don't have to subsidize it.  The reason I got rid of my cable is because ESPN bloats the bill so high, and the last thing I want to do is passively contribute to NFL quarterbacks making $50 million per year.

I mean as a brit I agree, no interest in "American Football" lol, but also Tennis, on the plus side they have some international rugby matches, now there is a proper sport with a mishapen ball 🙂 

[WheelofJuke]

Being an illegal monopoly (allegedly) isn't enough for Amazon? 

Gotta get some ads in now, too? Sheesh. 

Not renewing Prime next year if I can convince the spousal unit. 😐

[Lightfriendsocialmistress]

On 9/26/2023 at 2:12 PM, WheelofJuke said:

the spousal unit

This will be how I refer to my husband from now on. Thank you 😂

[Scarloc99]

On 9/26/2023 at 10:12 PM, WheelofJuke said:

Being an illegal monopoly (allegedly) isn't enough for Amazon? 

Gotta get some ads in now, too? Sheesh. 

Not renewing Prime next year if I can convince the spousal unit. 😐

I mean not sure how they are an illegal monopoly, they are certainly a monopoly in terms of the online shop, but, the ironic thing is that they could close Amazon and prime down tomorrow and it would barely impact revenue of the company overall because they make most of their profit on there Tech and web/cloud services AWS which ironically Netflix, Disney plus and Apple TV all use to host there streaming service. So Amazon powers pretty much every other streaming service on the planet lol. 

[WheelofJuke]

4 hours ago, Scarloc99 said:

I mean not sure how they are an illegal monopoly, they are certainly a monopoly in terms of the online shop, but, the ironic thing is that they could close Amazon and prime down tomorrow and it would barely impact revenue of the company overall because they make most of their profit on there Tech and web/cloud services AWS which ironically Netflix, Disney plus and Apple TV all use to host there streaming service. So Amazon powers pretty much every other streaming service on the planet lol. 

That shall be decided in court, as the federal anti-trust regulators are currently suing Amazon for the very thing. 

[Scarloc99]

45 minutes ago, WheelofJuke said:

That shall be decided in court, as the federal anti-trust regulators are currently suing Amazon for the very thing. 

Ok that’s related just to its online shopping experience, like I say they could shut that down tomorrow and the company would barely notice it. Any revenue lost would be cancelled out by no longer having to maintain the warehouses, pay staff etc. 

 

The technology arm is where the future of the company lies anyway, and they are so big and so well established because they are so reliable and just so much better than the competition. There is a reason that when you view a movie on Netflix Amazon is what is used to stream that movie to you. 

[Mirefox]

I know it is all about money, but this decision is also like shooting yourself in the foot; ad breaks destroy the integrity of a show.  When you are actually making the show yourself, you are doing two things.  First, you are building in to your show distractions that break the immersion.  Second, you are forcing the showrunners to create a show that has natural ad breaks; which can be jarring.

[VooDooNut]

I won't be subjected to ads. I avoid them like the plague. It's sad to see that people who already pay so much for Prime get squeezed even more. As @Mirefox said, I believe this will jeopardize the quality of the show, even if it adds to the production budget.

[Scarloc99]

On 10/7/2023 at 6:43 PM, Mirefox said:

I know it is all about money, but this decision is also like shooting yourself in the foot; ad breaks destroy the integrity of a show.  When you are actually making the show yourself, you are doing two things.  First, you are building in to your show distractions that break the immersion.  Second, you are forcing the showrunners to create a show that has natural ad breaks; which can be jarring.

If it is like other streamers it won’t be during the show, you will get mandatory ads at the start before the show plays.