How do people think paying for a service and still being served ads is acceptable?
Hulu has a lower price tear that includes ads. It makes it more affordable for some people. If they had started out with ads I would be less upset, but for a big company like Amazon it just seems like they’re trying to make even more money off of the consumer.
Hulu DID start out with ads. When they launched it was an entirely ad supported service. Hulu+ didn’t come until years later. After several years of running two tiers of service, free ad supported and paid ad free, they dropped the free tier. Now, years later, we’re back to ads with Hulu, but this time you pay for the privilege.
Right, but the business model is totally different. You’re paying your cable provider for access, you’re not paying to watch the TV shows. The TV shows were financed by broadcaster advertising revenues among other streams of income. With Amazon, you’re paying for access and to fund their programs. Ads are just greedy and anti-consumer for a vertically integrated platform like Amazon Video.
Cable wasn’t really a thing here in the UK, we’re not primed for their bullshit.
To be fair, Prime Video has always just been a free perk attached to prime (and with all the other ‘perks’ combined you could basically consider it free). For example I get an extra 3% back on all my Amazon orders by being a prime member. At the current cost of prime and just with the home supplies I order w/ subscribe and save, it pays for itself. That’s not to say I’m happy with this, but in actuality they’re fairly well positioned with the product to make this move and have most of the user base be merely disgruntled.
