Fair Warning: Amazon Prime Video Gets Ads January 29

One of the last holdouts in the advertising trend among streaming services is about to give in. Amazon warned it was thinking about adding ads to Prime Video, and it will make do on that threat about a month from now, they announced today.

However….Amazon will be doing this a bit differently (we mean worse). When Disney+, Netflix and Max started allowing advertising, they introduced a cheaper tier for those ads to run on. If you wanted the ad-free experience you could pay more, if you were fine with it you could pay less. This strategy kept their consumer base relatively happy. But Amazon doesn’t care if ANYONE’S happy….not its workers, not its customers, no one. What are you gonna do, NOT shop there? They’re sticking the ads onto their regular tier.

There will be a way to get rid of the ads — for an extra $3 a month. We’ve noticed Amazon tends to tack extra fees onto their fees. A Prime Video subscription somehow does not cover the library of movies they offer; most of them have to be rented for more money. Amazon says “This will allow us to continue investing in compelling content and keep increasing that investment over a long period of time.” But we all know it’s really going to build Bezos’ 37th superyacht.

The only remaining major player in the streaming biz to not incorporate ads of some kind is Apple. Apple makes a mint from their electronics and doesn’t need Apple TV to be a heavy money maker. Of course the same could be said for Amazon.