AMAZON Prime Video customers have spent winter bracing for an increase to the number of ads displayed on the streaming service.
The tech giant warned late last year that it was going to ramp up its ad slots sometime in 2025.
Roughly 12 months ago, the streaming service introduced ads to all Prime Video subscribers – and forced customers to pay an extra £2.99/$2.99 to get rid of them.
Since the company had not seen a significant decline in usership figures after the ad rollout, Amazon bosses have decided to introduce even more.
But subscribers say there are already more than enough ads on the platform.
“I’m done then, tried watching something last week and it was already at an unbearable level,” one viewer wrote in a Reddit post.
“Amazon are trashing all their services at the moment, baffling.”
In a separate post, another viewer added: “There’s already way more than Netflix etc. And when you rewind, it resets the ads. Fix that before increasing the amount ffs.”
The reaction is fairly unanimous: viewers don’t like ads – and are reluctant to accept more.
Some viewers that weren’t completely put off by the first tranche of adverts, have decided the second load is enough to make them boycott the service.
While others reckon the move will only push more people to pirate content.
“It’s already so bad. I’m out. I literally just canceled my subscription,” a third viewer wrote.
“I guess I need to sail the high seas again until corporate America gets its head of its ass.”
A fourth person added: “People liked streaming because they were sick of commercials and ridiculous fees.
“Now people are ditching streaming because they are sick of commercials and ridiculous fees.”
Prime Video followed in the footsteps of Netflix and then Disney+, which led the way by rolling out adverts – and then unveiling a new paid-for ad-free tier.
Amazon told customers last January that ads would allow the company to throw even more money behind original content – shows like The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, for example, which reportedly cost over $715million to make.
Viewers already paying for an ad-free package will be spared from the increase.
Upgrading your package can be done through the Prime Video website by following these steps:
Or, you can subscribe to Prime Video Ad Free on the Prime Video app for Fire TV, smart TVs, game consoles and set top boxes, by following these steps:
Once your subscription has started, you’ll no longer see ads while streaming on-demand movies and TV shows.
This applies to all Prime Video profiles that have been linked to your Amazon account.
However, this does not extend to the promotional trailers that appear before a movie or TV show.
While these trailers can be skipped, they cannot be removed with Prime Video Ad Free.
