It’s only been barely four months since Amazon placed ads on its streaming video service Prime Video, but the retail giant is already introducing more annoying promotional tactics — like showing ads when someone hits the pause button.
Tuesday, Amazon announced Three new ad formats for Prime Video will roll out later this year to entice subscribers to buy promoted items while watching content. Shoppable shopping carts will soon appear during commercial breaks in shows and movies offering viewers a “tiered assortment” of products they can buy on Amazon. That basically makes this an ad inside Another ad, It even “auto-pauses” if interacted with to give viewers time to browse.
TV shows, movies and live sports will also feature interactive brand trivia ads that can offer rewards “such as Amazon Shopping Credits” and pause ads that display a transparent overlay, allowing viewers to add the promoted product directly to their Amazon carts. Amazon says this overlay will only appear while the video is paused, but notes that pausing ads “increases the chance of engagement beyond a traditional ad break.”
Hulu introduced a similar ad feature that was temporarily activated back in 2019, which has now caught up with other streaming programs like YouTube. Amazon hasn’t specified when it will roll out these new ad formats, but they will be available “in the next streaming year” — which typically ends on August 31.
Prime Video users who want an ad-free experience have to pay Amazon an additional $2.99 per month on top of their existing subscription to get the privilege, but it seems a lot of people aren’t doing that. Amazon says its cheapest ad-supported tier has an average monthly reach of more than 200 million global customers. The company did not disclose the number of Prime Video subscribers it has, but Amazon said it has 200 million global subscribers. Cross her complete Prime Membership Program in 2021.
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