Prime Video Wants to Show ‘Meaningfully Fewer Ads’ Than Hulu, Netflix, Other Streamers
Streaming ads are now nearly ubiquitous, but Amazon doesn’t want to overload its customers with ads during playback.
It’s hard to find a streaming service that doesn’t offer ad-supported plans these days. Of all the major services available, only Apple TV+ does not currently have a plan with ads, and even that appears to be changing. Amazon’s streamer Prime Video introduced its ad plan at the end of January, and executives spoke about its success during Amazon’s conference call to discuss its quarterly earnings report on Thursday.
Key Details:
- Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said during the call he aims to deliver “meaningfully fewer” ads on Prime Video.
- The Streamable’s tests in January showed that Prime Video only offered two ads per episode, and none during playback.
- Most streamers offer four to five minutes of ads per hour, markedly fewer than are found on linear TV.
The ad rollout on Prime Video differed from that of other streamers. The company introduced ads on its existing streaming tier and forced most of its customers to stomach the ads unless they wanted to pay $2.99 per month extra to go without, it wants to keep viewers from having to put up with too many commercials at a time.
“While ads have become a norm of streaming video, we aim to have meaningfully fewer ads than linear TV and other streaming TV providers,” Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said during the company’s quarterly earnings call.
The Streamable’s expert Matt Taminini tested the ad-supported plan of Prime Video when it was first released in January. He found that the service did not show any ads during the playback of a show, and only offered two ads in the pre-roll slot before the title began playing. Prime Video may have introduced in-episode ads in the meantime, but there are still fewer overall than many other platforms.
How Many Ads Does the Average Streamer Show?
A survey from 2023 found that many streaming services were increasing their ad loads to help try and close revenue gaps. Some streamers, such as Hulu, make viewers sit through 7 to 10 minutes of ads per hour of playback, which is at the higher end of commercial loads.
Most other streamers try to keep ads at around four to five minutes per hour. It’s not particularly clear from Jassy’s words if he means that Prime Video will show fewer ads than that; representatives from Netflix, Disney+, and other streamers have likewise made comments about wanting to offer fewer commercials than the competition.
Streamers still do a better job of cutting out ads than linear TV, which has around 15 to 20 minutes of ads per hour. But customers still remember the salad days of streaming, when it was almost unthinkable that streaming services would force viewers to watch ads as the lumbering dinosaur cable did.
It will bear watching to see if Prime Video decreases the number of ads it offers, or if it simply tries to stay consistent with the ad loads it currently has. Amazon doesn’t have to rely on streaming ads as much as other companies, since the bulk of its revenues come from its e-commerce platform, not its streamer.
Amazon Prime Video
Amazon Prime Video is a subscription video streaming service that includes on-demand access to 10,000+ movies, TV shows, and Prime Originals like “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” “Jack Ryan,” “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” “The Boys,” and more. Subscribers can also add third-party services like Max, Showtime, STARZ, and dozens more with Amazon Prime Video Channels. Prime Video also offers exclusive live access to NFL Thursday Night Football.