Amazon Freevee runs as a free streaming service on the US company’s platform. The service is financed by advertising – exclusively. Our author thinks that this is an unfavorable constellation.
The streaming market is now huge and has replaced linear TV in many respects. The various providers differ primarily in their content. Above all, the originals and exclusives play a major role, because technically it hardly makes any difference which platform you use. And there is another point in which the services are becoming more and more similar: many now have a cheaper tariff, in which users then have to accept advertising breaks. The emphasis here is on tariff, because in this case you have a choice. Amazon Freevee, on the other hand, does not even offer the option. That should change!
New content for Amazon Freevee
In the summer of 2022, Amazon also launched Freevee in Germany. The offer has been available in the USA since 2019. The service is completely free of charge, but advertising is shown regularly. The only requirement is an Amazon account to log in. However, a Prime membership is not necessary.
So far, the commercial breaks have been limited. The spots are between 30 and 60 seconds long. The frequency of the display depends on the length of the content. So you can count on a commercial in a series of normal length. In the case of a film with the usual length of around two hours, on the other hand, there are four clips.
So far so good. Now Amazon has another batch of series and movies for Freevee announced. There is talk of over 100 originals, which will then only be seen on the service. Amazon is already gradually moving content to the internal alternative to Amazon Prime Video.
Is advertising more lucrative than subscriptions?
Overall, this suggests that advertising for Amazon is more attractive in the case of Freevee than recouping the costs through subscriptions. Especially in combination with the necessary Amazon account, this results in an uncomfortable mix for the user. As if the company were luring people with free content, then making money with advertising and wanting to lure users to their own paid offers.
Also, in my opinion, Freevee shouldn’t force the ads on its users. Paying less – or in this case nothing at all – and seeing advertising for it is a fair deal. But Freevee doesn’t offer any other option either. This is particularly annoying for Prime users, who already have a subscription but cannot access a lot of Freevee content, but still see it constantly in their feed. The fact that Amazon is taking such a two-pronged approach here bothers me enormously.
The idea of streaming services is, among other things, that you pay and can use all content at any time without advertising. I don’t have this option with Freevee. Even streaming platforms linked to TV stations such as RTL+ now offer a tariff that is completely free of advertising. Then users can decide for themselves whether the ad-free subscription is worth the higher price or not.