Prime Video Will Make Us Suffer Through Ads to Watch 'The Boys'

By Dustin Rowles | TV | September 22, 2023 |

By Dustin Rowles | TV | September 22, 2023 |

Increasingly, there is no safe space from ads anymore. Most of the streaming networks have ad tiers now. The list does not yet include Apple TV+ (that is inevitable), but it will soon include Prime Video. Ugh, ads.

Does Amazon need the extra money? Not really. After all, revenue from Prime Video is a tiny fraction of what the entire corporation earns. However, these corporations cannot help themselves: Where there is more money to be made, they will make it. Profit is not enough. They have to maximize profits.

Starting in the new year, then, Prime Video will be adding ad breaks to the likes of The Boys and their hole show, Outer Range (when is that finally returning?). The ad breaks will not be lengthy. The plan is about four minutes of ads per hour. But that’s not maximizing profits, right? Give it a year or three, and those ad breaks will be up to 20 minutes an hour.

The good news is that subscribers can pay an additional $3 per month on top of the existing cost of Amazon Prime to eliminate the commercials. Many of us won’t pay $3 to get rid of only 4 minutes per commercials an hour, which is precisely how we know the number of commercials will eventually increase.

We are just reproducing cable on different platforms, aren’t we? Someone — Roku, Apple, or maybe even Amazon — will figure out how to convince all the streamers to band together and offer themselves in bundles. It’s only a matter of time.