Will anyone still watch Amazon Prime video once they start inserting advertising?

[Steve Demuth]

When my wife and I moved into together in 1978, we made a decision to have no television in our home. Cable wasn't even an option where we lived. Movie rental hadn't been invented yet, but we did occassionally rent movies when it did become a thing. So, we had no real in-home video to speak of until streaming became possible over our limited internet bandwidth, about 15 years ago. We've settled into a regular pattern since then of watching about an hour of (mostly old) programming each night, just before we turn out the lights. Neither of us are worth a damn for anything else by that point in the day anyway. I watch some youtube skills content, and enjoy Sabine Hossenfelder's take on the world of science. I can't stand ads though. Wherever we get video, we pay for the ad free version.

We call it mindless pass time, because it is absolutely mindless to just sit and watch. I still feel like I'd be a better person without most of this, but to be frank, at this point in my life, watching is an alternative to doing nothing that is remotely useful. Both of us still use the time when we have energy and alertness enough to actually engage the world, to do just that.

[Lee DeRaud]

...I watch some youtube skills content, and enjoy Sabine Hossenfelder's take on the world of science.
...
We call it mindless pass time, because it is absolutely mindless to just sit and watch.

Uh, no, actually. Sounds like your mind is engaged even if your body is not.

[Lee DeRaud]

The confluence of advertising and football in this thread reminds me that the SuperBowl is coming up, when the ads become more interesting than the content.

[Chris Parks]

And everyone here is using the internet. Pretty hard to travel that pathway and avoid all ads, at the same time as paying a fee to the ISP

I literally never see any ads on the net and that includes YT and no I don't pay for the YT premium service. It will be interesting to see how long YT pushes the advert thing as it is currently doing, if YT paid decent money to contributors who provide the content I wouldn't have too much of a problem watching with ads.

[Bill Howatt]

A search says that it varies but the typical number is content providers 55%, YouTube 45%. Good or bad??
I always thought YT providers were doing it for personal gratification - sort of a "look at what I'm doing or how clever I am" thing.

[Michael Schuch]

We don't watch it now. Every few months I spend some time looking for something I want to watch, give up and go back to the free junk we get with an antenna on the TV. Not about to pay extra.

Same here! Not much of anything I watch on Amazon. No chance I would pay for add free or watch anything with adds.

[Kent A Bathurst]

Referencing my earlier post - case in point:

Subscribed to Disney+ early December on a monthly rate - $7.99 with ads, not the $13.99 ad-free. Then I cancelled a couple days later. I was good for the entire month.

Nets out to $2 per episode for the 4 Doctor Who December specials.

[andrew whicker]

The come back of ads sucks. YouTube recently made it impossible to use ad blockers.. ugh.

It's lame. Commercials are lame. The rationalization that they used to exist so get over it is lame.

It's 2023, let's live in a better world. Nope. Back to the same old crap. Paying for multiple channels just like cable of old.

[Bill Howatt]

OK, we can cancel your Youtube commercials and monthly payments. The only simple thing that you have to do is come up with a way of paying for their 72,000 servers, the power to run them and the staff to operate and maintain them.

[andrew whicker]

OK, we can cancel your Youtube commercials and monthly payments. The only simple thing that you have to do is come up with a way of paying for their 72,000 servers, the power to run them and the staff to operate and maintain them.

Trust me, I play my small violin for the multi billionaires every day

[Pat Germain]

Trust me, I play my small violin for the multi billionaires every day

YouTube is owned by Google. They bought it. Google is certainly a multi-billion dollar corporation; emphasis on corporation. Google exists to make a profit. They bought YouTube to make a profit. As mentioned above, keeping YouTube up and running requires vast expenditures of cash. Google must make back that cash and a profit to boot. If they don't charge subscription fees and they don't have ads, YouTube ceases to exist.

As I pointed out previously, television has always involved ads or fees. People like to remember TV from decades past as being wonderful, but the vast majority of it was complete crap with a few good shows here and there. The crap as well as those good shows were brought to us by Proctor and Gamble, RJ Reynolds, Nabisco and other corporations who paid for commercials. Now we have a LOT more choices when it comes to content. Sometimes we have to watch ads. Sometimes we have to pay. I'm good with that. If I wasn't good with that, I simply wouldn't watch. That's it. That's all.

[Anuj Prateek]

Most likely will watch Prime Video (Prime) exclusive shows even with ads. Like, right now we are watching House MD on Prime because it's not on Netflix.

Outside of the exclusive shows, I don't watch Prime much. Really dislike the interface, slowness, ads at start of an episode, etc. Due to this I rarely browse and discover shows on Prime. Once ads are introduced, usage will drop even further.

[Stan Calow]

Yes, likely to continue watching. It's all about the programs: if they're good, I can bear the ads. It's all temporary. Sooner or later, some new thing will come along and change how we view entertainment. Just like streaming has overtaken cable, and some previously hot tickets, like HBO, Showtime and other premium channels have faded away.

[Edward Weber]

I will continue until the ads become too much, then I'll pay.
Television, in all it's forms, is not a mindless pass time IMO but I suppose it all depends on whet you watch. I find TV it a way to inform, entertain and educate. All of which are necessary to me.

[Bill Howatt]

I will continue until the ads become too much, then I'll pay.
Television, in all it's forms, is not a mindless pass time IMO but I suppose it all depends on whet you watch. I find TV it a way to inform, entertain and educate. All of which are necessary to me.

Probably one of the most sensible and reasonable replies in this thread. It indeed does all of the above and I've learned a lot from various programs and had a few laughs and good drama from others. Dismissing it outright is short-sighted.