Last week, PrimeVideo subscribers (read: anyone with an Amazon Prime account) received the below message:
Dear Prime member,
We are writing to you today about an upcoming change to your Prime Video experience. Starting January 29, Prime Video movies and TV shows will include limited advertisements. This will allow us to continue investing in compelling content and keep increasing that investment over a long period of time. We aim to have meaningfully fewer ads than linear TV and other streaming TV providers. No action is required from you, and there is no change to the current price of your Prime membership. We will also offer a new ad-free option for an additional $2.99 per month* that you can sign up for here.
Apparently Amazon and their infinite dollars can’t spring for a form letter that includes the subscriber’s name, but that’s at the bottom of my list of annoyances with all of this.
The thing about most tech “disruptors” is that their function isn’t to improve their industry. Instead, it’s their job to convince consumers that improvements are their goal when really they’ve just created something wildly unsustainable in the long term. But, the real trick here is that they don’t need to hold out forever. They just need enough people to adopt the process and kill what came before it.
Uber, Lyft and other rideshare companies gutted the taxi industry, and now we get into cars with strangers who have no certifications beyond “has drivers license and might not murder you, probably.” They did so by offering cheap fares (that their drivers see very little of) and quick service, neither of which are true years into the process despite the companies having very little overhead. The song and dance is the same with AirBnB, but they didn’t just put a hit out on hotels, they destroyed the housing market in the process.
What the rideshare, short-term rentals, and streaming industries have in common is that all of them entered the market with big promises at low, low prices. They held onto said prices long enough to gut their respective industries (taxis; hotels and housing; cable), and then, once they shifted the market past the point of no return, the price hikes came.
In most cases, a company’s willingness to exploit workers will sustain them for a decent amount of time. In the beginning of 2023, Forbes reported that “Uber has been raising US ride hail prices four times faster than the rate of inflation while squeezing driver pay in its quest for profitability.” Meanwhile, the world saw the result of streamers undercutting worker pay for too long in the form of both actors and writers striking. Now, in the wake of those strikes, it’s easy for Hollywood executives to say that they’re raising prices because striking workers demanded fair pay, when in reality their model was never sustainable to begin with. (Nor were their executives’ pay.)
And so, here we are at the beginning of new cable. Old cable’s still there, of course (this dinosaur even still has it!) but many of the hottest, most in-demand shows are currently streaming originals. Consumers demanded à la carte options so we could pick and choose based on the programming we were interested in, and the proverbial monkey’s paw delivered with the bucket of empty promises that is the streaming business.
I realize that sounds pretty glib coming from the gal whose entire career depends on the streaming industry, but there’s more: it’s gonna get worse before it gets better. Streaming is going through a period of flux. We’re going to see mergers and partnerships like Paramount+ and Showtime coming out of the woodwork, while other companies are likely to fold all together. There will be more price hikes, and when their advisors tell them it’s too soon for another increase, we’ll start seeing more ads until we end up right back at traditional commercial breaks.
All of that is to say that Prime Video isn’t alone in this, but they are the only streamer with Amazon money, and limited transparency on viewership and subscriber numbers (since everything is wrapped up in Amazon Prime). Prime Video, like Apple TV+, is a value-add platform to help support the overall Amazon portfolio (as opposed to streamers like Max and Netflix who aren’t attached to multi-trillion dollar empires in a completely different industry), but how many hikes or additional commercials before subscribers decide the service isn’t increasing the value anymore?
Prime Video has some incredible programming, with exciting titles on the horizon for 2024. But not in a way that makes their viewing portfolio worth more money to subscribers or makes the formerly ad-free experience worth sitting through commercials for. The biggest benefit they have working in their favor is that viewers can’t cancel Prime Video without cancelling their entire Amazon Prime account, so they don’t have to worry about traditional user retention issues.
In fact, they don’t even have to worry about a drop in viewership. Even if some folks decide that The Boys or The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power aren’t worth it with ads (or for the additional $3 to make said ads go away), Amazon is still basically printing money at this point. What are a few dropped streaming hours in the wake of added revenue?
The biggest frustration here is that, at least when it comes to streaming, we always knew this was going to be the case. Experts were fully aware an at-home, unlimited on-demand platform with no commercials was unsustainable. The question was how long they’d be able to hold onto the model without caving. Said caving is hitting across the board, and we’re all stuck in the landslide.
Amelia is the entertainment Streaming Editor here at IGN. She's also a film and television critic who spends too much time talking about dinosaurs, superheroes, and folk horror. You can usually find her with her dog, Rogers. There may be cheeseburgers involved. Follow her across social @ThatWitchMia
