Can you hear the soft, angelic voices of corporate executives singing in unison? It can only mean one thing. They have come up with new ways to squeeze money out of our eyes. According to a report in the Financial Times, Amazon is adding more ads to Prime Video. This increase in corporate sponsorship luxury is scheduled to go into effect early next year.
This comes less than a year after Amazon forced advertising on its streaming video platform, something all major streamers now do. We pay to see ads. That’s really cool. In any case, it remains unclear how many more ads will appear in the next episode of Reacher or where they will appear. Modern streaming shows aren’t made with ads in mind, so these ads appear everywhere.
Advertising is an important source of revenue for Amazon. That’s because ads come on top of the monthly Prime membership you’re already paying for. There is an additional fee to remove ads. The company recently touted the fact that it had signed more than $1.8 billion in advertising deals at its Upfront event in September. This exceeded the company’s own goals. Amazon also revealed that Prime Video’s advertising base reaches 19 million monthly users in the UK alone. This tier is used by more than 100 million people each month in the United States.
Kelly Day, vice president of Prime Video International, told the Financial Times that the platform initially launched with “very light advertising” to help consumers prepare for the onslaught ahead. She said the first rollout was a deliberate “gentle entry into advertising”.
“I know it was a bit of a contrarian approach,” she says. “But it’s actually going much better than we expected,” Day said, adding that after the company introduced advertising, “we saw a huge exodus and cancellations.” He added that there was no such thing.
The company is also preparing an interactive advertising experience that will allow Prime Video viewers to add products to their carts directly from the video stream. This works with a physical remote control and an app. Great, great corporate synergy. yay!
