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

[Brian Elfert]

Is anyone still planning on watching Prime video once Amazon starts inserting advertising in early 2024? I very rarely watch anything on there now, and I certainly won't watch anything once advertising starts. There is nothing that has enough value to me to pay another $2.99 a month for no advertising.

I pay the $13.99 a month for Youtube to be ad free, but considering dumping that after the price increase as I watch way too much Youtube when there are no ads.

[Pat Germain]

I don't like the idea of paying even more to avoid ads, but sheesh, I save so much money in shipping being a Prime member, it's still worthwhile for me.

[Alan Rutherford]

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.

[Bill Howatt]

I don't like the idea of paying even more to avoid ads, but sheesh, I save so much money in shipping being a Prime member, it's still worthwhile for me.

Regardless of the pay or not to pay for advertising, I find Prime to be one of the best deals around - free shipping, Prime TV and Prime music. The ads I've encountered in things like YouTube are trivial compared to OTA or equivalent TV ad time/hour. I notice the TV programs have their ad times well synced now so channel hopping during a commercial doesn't help as much as it did.

[Lee DeRaud]

I'm not thrilled with the idea, but I have noted that the ads on FreeVee (which seems to be Amazon's beta test for the "feature") are relatively unobtrusive compared to those on broadcast or cable channels. If there was a free option for Britbox that included that level of ads, I'd consider switching to it.

(At present there's no option to remove them...we'll see how I feel once I'm caught up on 'Bosch: Legacy'.)

[Pat Germain]

For decades we accepted free TV with commercials. Then we got pay TV with no commercials. For some reason now a lot of people expect free TV with no commercials; not gonna happen. But I do agree it's annoying when I'm already paying for a streaming service and they want me to pay more to avoid commercials.

[Bill Howatt]

Obviously, somebody has to pay the bills but have you noticed how much time/hour is spent on commercials now compared to the shows years ago? It's more!
Then you buy a big screen TV and for some period of time part of the screen is covered with more frequent and larger pop-up ads.

[Pat Germain]

Obviously, somebody has to pay the bills but have you noticed how much time/hour is spent on commercials now compared to the shows years ago? It's more!
Then you buy a big screen TV and for some period of time part of the screen is covered with more frequent and larger pop-up ads.

The market is now much more fragmented than in decades past when there were only three networks. Now everyone is scratching and clawing for small groups of viewers.

I never had a problem with pop-up ads on my TV. Perhaps I don't watch channels that do this.

[Mike Null]

I don't watch much on Amazon but I do subscribe to Brit box. I use Amazon a lot and think their current fees are a bargain.

[Bruce Wrenn]

I don't watch much on Amazon but I do subscribe to Brit box. I use Amazon a lot and think their current fees are a bargain.I only use Prime when they offer me a month for FREE, or $1.99. Happens every couple months. Always cancel three days before renewal, and just in case, print out confirmation of cancelation. Other times, if I need something quick, get kids to order it for me. The one Item I needed overnight, got lost for a week, so I was glad I didn't pay for Prime. According to tracking, rode around in four different delivery trucks, any one of which could have stopped at house, based upon their delivery routes.

[Patty Hann]

I only use Prime when they offer me a month for FREE, or $1.99. Happens every couple months. Always cancel three days before renewal, and just in case, print out confirmation of cancelation. Other times, if I need something quick, get kids to order it for me. The one Item I needed overnight, got lost for a week, so I was glad I didn't pay for Prime. According to tracking, rode around in four different delivery trucks, any one of which could have stopped at house, based upon their delivery routes.

I do this also... wait until they offer Prime to me free or dirt cheap. I sign up, then cancel right before renewal.
Happens about every 5-6 weeks.

[Tom M King]

I spend the money that I don't spend on stuff like cigarettes, soda, alcohol, and overeating enough to be overweight on things like this and don't even think about it.

[Pat Germain]

I spend the money that I don't spend on stuff like cigarettes, soda, alcohol, and overeating enough to be overweight on things like this and don't even think about it.

Ha-ha! That's my philosophy as well. I also don't gamble. I'm amused by people who tell me how much they won gambling because I know they lost ten times that or more before winning. Oh, and then they lose what they won because they were, "Gambling on the casino's money". Dude, if you won the money gambling, it's your money and you lost more of your money.

[Bill Howatt]

Ha-ha! That's my philosophy as well. I also don't gamble. I'm amused by people who tell me how much they won gambling because I know they lost ten times that or more before winning. Oh, and then they lose what they won because they were, "Gambling on the casino's money". Dude, if you won the money gambling, it's your money and you lost more of your money.

However, you don't get the sense of accomplishment that I get when I fly over Las Vegas knowing I helped build a city in the desert.

On a more serious note, spend your money on what makes you happy - just stay within your budget. I consider vacations to be somewhat of a waste of money, when they are over you generally have nothing but a picture and a souvenir T-shirt and all the problems you were escaping are still there.

[roger wiegand]

Not watching TV in any form is a real win-win solution to all of these problems. I really can't believe our lives are poorer without it. -- I guess I don't know for sure, as I quit years ago, but nothing I've heard about is very tempting.

[Brian Elfert]

It is hardly free shipping when you are paying $139 per year. There are many places to order most of the same stuff with free shipping with an order between $25 and $50. Even Amazon itself will ship for free with a $35 order. I would consider Amazon Prime worth the cost if they could ship everything in one to two days. I often order obscure stuff through Amazon Prime that I can't get locally. It is not unusual for shipping to take up to five days on this obscure stuff. Yes, five days is still fast shipping, and we are spoiled with shipping these days, but five days can be an eternity to finish a repair of something used all the time. I am not ordering stuff like paper towels, toilet paper, and the like that I can get locally. I can be walking into Walmart or Target to get household essentials in less than fifteen minutes.

I get Prime at no cost as a household member with my parent's account. I would be very unlikely to pay for it otherwise.

[Bill Howatt]

I'll paraphrase what I said in the post above, "do what makes you happy".
Personally, I find there is a lot of good stuff on TV along with crap stuff. Smithsonian channel, Discovery, History, Love Nature, Science, specialty channels like Food, Velocity, ... can be very educational. On the regular channels and HBO and PBS there are some very good programs. To say it is all garbage is not correct.

[glenn bradley]

When cable TV started inserting commercials way back when I dropped the service. I went without TV for nearly 20 years and just rented movies. Someone new in my life brought cable TV back into it. Lee must have a different FreeVee than I get. There are more commercials than show. I routinely refuse to watch anything if I see offered that is provided by FreeVee. It just isn't worth the trouble to me.

This seems to be a pattern with me; if I am already paying for something I don't expect to have to watch commercials as well . . . I'm already paying, right? If the provider starts doing that I cancel and move on. This is probably more doable for me since I follow no sports and don't suffer anxiety if I miss "my show" whatever that happens to be at a given time. Wow, I am really boring :D.

[Patty Hann]

When cable TV started inserting commercials way back when I dropped the service. I went without TV for nearly 20 years and just rented movies. Someone new in my life brought cable TV back into it. Lee must have a different FreeVee than I get. There are more commercials than show. I routinely refuse to watch anything if I see offered that is provided by FreeVee. It just isn't worth the trouble to me.

This seems to be a pattern with me; if I am already paying for something I don't expect to have to watch commercials as well . . . I'm already paying, right? If the provider starts doing that I cancel and move on. This is probably more doable for me since I follow no sports and don't suffer anxiety if I miss "my show" whatever that happens to be at a given time. Wow, I am really boring :D.

Boring people of the world, UNITE!
I stopped watching regular programming when I went in the Navy.
I haven't watched watched regular programming, streamed programming, cable programming .... nothing except classic movies (and some not so classic ones... I like some of the MCU movies).
But all movies are on a physical medium DVD or BD (even a few VHS tapes for which there is no other version), and I own 98% of the movies I watch, and borrow a few from friends.
ON the rare occasion when Univ of Arizona (Wildcats) make it to the Final 4, I'll watch the game.

[Lee DeRaud]

I went without TV for nearly 20 years and just rented movies. Someone new in my life brought cable TV back into it. Lee must have a different FreeVee than I get. There are more commercials than show.
Eh? My FreeVee experience so far is limited to 'Bosch: Legacy' and 'Fringe'...other shows may run by different rules. The Bosch show is brand new, but has much less advertising than anything new I see on regular TV/cable. Fringe is an older show (2008-13), but even with the ads, they clock in several minutes shorter than their 60-minute original runtime. (Ten years back, a 60-minute show split about 48-12 content to ad.) Maybe your memory of how much ad time was typical 20 years ago is optimistic.

(My personal pet peeve for ads is how broadcast/cable shows back-load them: almost all of the ads are in the last half of the time-slot. It makes a show pace like an NBA game.)

[Kent A Bathurst]

Content and services aren't created out of air and incantations. If you want them, you'll have to pay in one form or another.

The FreeVee discussion boils down to: the value received v price paid is out of balance. Fine - don't take the product. Basic Econ 101 principle. Or, "you get what you pay for". Paid zilch? Here's your product.

I don't recall watching any of it either. However, there are a number of ad-based sites that I will use on occasion when there is some content - usually a movie - I want to seee, available no where else, and am willing to pay that price. Same for pay-per-view movies at various places, including Prime, Apple+, etc.

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

[Dave Zellers]

Content and services aren't created out of air and incantations. If you want them, you'll have to pay in one form or another.

That's the bottom line for sure. Finding the right balance between ad time vs content time is the tricky part. On the short stuff, I find myself voting with my index finger more and more lately when the ad length exceeds the content length. *CLICK!* -- Goodbye!

But for weekly series length shows and the like, it would be nice to settle in on a standard.

[Lee DeRaud]

...when the ad length exceeds the content length.
Ok, I like hyperbole as much as the next person, but I have to ask, what are you watching where that actually happens?

[Dave Zellers]

Ok, I like hyperbole as much as the next person, but I have to ask, what are you watching where that actually happens?

Well I certainly can't cite the specific instance now, but yes- I have clicked on short videos and been confronted with 2 short ads that exceeded the length of the video I clicked on. I never saw the video- I clicked away after the first ad which is when I saw for the first time the length of the second ad.

[Curt Harms]

Not watching TV in any form is a real win-win solution to all of these problems. I really can't believe our lives are poorer without it. -- I guess I don't know for sure, as I quit years ago, but nothing I've heard about is very tempting.

I think there are things on TV worth watching but like most things of value, they take require some effort to find. This Old House, New Yankee Workshop, some stuff from Science channel I don't feel dumber after watching it. I 'cut the cord' about a year ago but enjoy watching football so subscribe to Youtube TV. There are a few channels with worthwhile content but not $72/month worth so it's going away after the Super Bowl.

[Lee DeRaud]

Well I certainly can't cite the specific instance now, but yes- I have clicked on short videos and been confronted with 2 short ads that exceeded the length of the video I clicked on. I never saw the video- I clicked away after the first ad which is when I saw for the first time the length of the second ad.
So you're talking about minute-length random clips (YouTube?), not something that qualifies as a "show", right?
More to the point, not the kind of stuff shown on Amazon Prime, Netflix, or traditional TV/cable.

[Dave Zellers]

So you're talking about minute-length random clips (YouTube?), not something that qualifies as a "show", right?
More to the point, not the kind of stuff shown on Amazon Prime, Netflix, or traditional TV/cable.

Yes- YouTube. I guess I veered off topic.:o

[roger wiegand]

I think there are things on TV worth watching but like most things of value, they take require some effort to find. This Old House, New Yankee Workshop, some stuff from Science channel I don't feel dumber after watching it. I 'cut the cord' about a year ago but enjoy watching football so subscribe to Youtube TV. There are a few channels with worthwhile content but not $72/month worth so it's going away after the Super Bowl.

I don't really think there's nothing worth watching, just that it's not worth the time that it takes away from reading books or working in the shop-- it's a trade off. Knowing myself I know that I'd soon be watching something completely mindless. I certainly squander enough hours wandering the interwebs. I used to like watching football, but now all I can see is guys literally bashing their brains out for my entertainment and I can't justify that to myself.

[Steve Demuth]

I will probably pay the extra. I'll be annoyed, but it's a trivial sum of money, and there's no way I'm going watch ads in my video content.

[Mike Soaper]

I don't really think there's nothing worth watching, just that it's not worth the time that it takes away from reading books or working in the shop-- it's a trade off. Knowing myself I know that I'd soon be watching something completely mindless. I certainly squander enough hours wandering the interwebs. I used to like watching football, but now all I can see is guys literally bashing their brains out for my entertainment and I can't justify that to myself.

I agree with you on football, I lost interest when it seemed the object was to make brutal tackles. I once worked for a division manager who was previously a NFL player on a superbowl team, he said his kids were NOT going to play football.

Fwiw regarding qualify tv, as I understand it the boat in Gillian's Island (S.S Minnow) was named after Newton Minow who was chairman of the FCC in 1961 and in speech called American television a vast wasteland.

[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. :D

[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.

[Pat Germain]

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.

HBO is now the "Max" streaming service.

[Pat Germain]

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.

Agree completely. :)

[Lee DeRaud]

HBO is now the "Max" streaming service.
Standalone HBO still exists on cable...it (usually) includes free access to the streaming service Max.
Despite all the noise about "cord-cutting", there are still a LOT of cable subscribers out there.

[Stan Calow]

HBO is now the "Max" streaming service.

Yes I know - it went from HBO to HBO Max and now just Max. I thought people would recognize the name HBO better. And it's fallen behind Netflix in popularity. Kind of proving my point at how the whole TV business keeps evolving.

[Pat Germain]

Yes I know - it went from HBO to HBO Max and now just Max. I thought people would recognize the name HBO better. And it's fallen behind Netflix in popularity. Kind of proving my point at how the whole TV business keeps evolving.

I'm thinking it might be devolving of late. Seems a lot of studio executives are wringing their hands over streaming content; especially after recent strikes in Hollywood.

Mrs. Pat has an extensive collection of DVD and Blu-ray discs in the hundreds. Lately I've been wondering if she should just get rid of them since streaming is the new technology. Then I saw a few videos and articles about all the chaos with streaming content. One video pointed out how some titles, like the movie "Cacoon", have disappeared. You can only watch it if you happen to have an older DVD copy. Many people are predicting this will become more common. And sure enough, I have recently looked for a few titles for streaming and either couldn't find them or found I would have to pay to "Rent" or "Buy" them. And when you "Buy" streaming content, the content owner can pull it at any time. So I go to the Mrs. Pat collection and, sure enough, she almost always has it on disc. Now I'm thinking we should just hang onto all those discs. I know people who built their own digital server and copy everything to that. It's also a good strategy, but since I have the physical space to store discs, I'll stick with that.

[Bill Howatt]

I think the issue, or at least some it, is that streaming services license the movie or whatever for a certain period of time from the owner and when that is over it gets pulled off.
You've probably seen things like, "Available until March31, 20XX".

[Marc Fenneuff]

Pat nailed it. Long term, it's in every studios' best interest to lock their content up behind a streaming paywall with a list of Terms & Conditions that leaves you powerless. Once physical discs die off, we will all be locked into paying-per-viewing for everything, or paying a monthly subscription. Or both. And a lot of content (think anything not a blockbuster) will be gone.

[Tom M King]

I don't mind, begrudge, or even care about the three bucks a month. What I want to know is if you go ad free will the content just skip past the ad time, or will it sit there with a blank screen while the ad runs. If it sits there with a blank screen and wastes my time, I'm out.

BIL tells me one service they have does that, so they're paying extra just to not have to watch the ad, but the screen goes blank. I forget what service that is.

[Patty Hann]

I'm thinking it might be devolving of late. Seems a lot of studio executives are wringing their hands over streaming content; especially after recent strikes in Hollywood.

Mrs. Pat has an extensive collection of DVD and Blu-ray discs in the hundreds. Lately I've been wondering if she should just get rid of them since streaming is the new technology. Then I saw a few videos and articles about all the chaos with streaming content. One video pointed out how some titles, like the movie "Cacoon", have disappeared. You can only watch it if you happen to have an older DVD copy. Many people are predicting this will become more common. And sure enough, I have recently looked for a few titles for streaming and either couldn't find them or found I would have to pay to "Rent" or "Buy" them. And when you "Buy" streaming content, the content owner can pull it at any time. So I go to the Mrs. Pat collection and, sure enough, she almost always has it on disc. Now I'm thinking we should just hang onto all those discs. I know people who built their own digital server and copy everything to that. It's also a good strategy, but since I have the physical space to store discs, I'll stick with that.

Mrs Pat is my New Best Friend.
As long as you own the hard copy you will never be at the mercy of the "Content Czars."
Also I read that some streaming services (Netflix being one IIRC) sometimes lop off the credits at the end of movies.
I am a "credit watcher"... have been since I was in third grade (and this was long, long before there were any "easter eggs" in the credits.)
Lopping off the credits of any movie would annoy me no end, to the point of near rage.

[Lee DeRaud]

Also I read that some streaming services (Netflix being one IIRC) sometimes lop off the credits at the end of movies.
I am a "credit watcher"... have been since I was in third grade (and this was long, long before there were any "easter eggs" in the credits.)
Lopping off the credits of any movie would annoy me no end, to the point of near rage.
I'm not a credit watcher normally, but as I recall, Netflix shrinks the credits to a tiny window and shows a teaser/trailer/whatever for the next episode (in a series) or a similar movie. (Not sure how they pick the "next in line".) But if you click on that window (or just hit 'OK' depending on the device), the credits go back to full screen.

(The credits sometimes get out of hand. A friend who works as an editor noted that one movie she worked on, her then-boyfriend fetched sandwiches during an all-nighter editing session, got a credit, and now has a "production assistant" IMDB entry. :D)

[Patty Hann]

I'm not a credit watcher normally, but as I recall, Netflix shrinks the credits to a tiny window and shows a teaser/trailer/whatever for the next episode (in a series) or a similar movie. (Not sure how they pick the "next in line".) But if you click on that window (or just hit 'OK' depending on the device), the credits go back to full screen.

(The credits sometimes get out of hand. A friend who works as an editor noted that one movie she worked on, her then-boyfriend fetched sandwiches during an all-nighter editing session, got a credit, and now has a "production assistant" IMDB entry. :D)

Too funny :D

[eugene thomas]

i hated paying for add free on discovery pluss . after all the political adds last election cycle add free is money well spent

[Mark Wedel]

Presumably Amazon will do the same as other ad free services do - you just don't see ads, and no time is taken up with a black screen where the ad would be.

That at least has been my experience with peacock and youtube when I had ad free versions of those. It would be pointless to just have a black screen that one has to sit through.

That said, for content that is streamed live (eg, Thursday night football or other sporting events) where ads are inserted for those not paying for the premium service, it probably is a black screen that sits there, because it is not like they can skip ahead. So if a lot of your viewing is events of that type, premium ad free may not get you much.

[Lee DeRaud]

That said, for content that is streamed live (eg, Thursday night football or other sporting events) where ads are inserted for those not paying for the premium service, it probably is a black screen that sits there, because it is not like they can skip ahead. So if a lot of your viewing is events of that type, premium ad free may not get you much.

Don't they just normally charge for those on a game-by-game basis for non-Prime viewers?

We've only watched one of the Thursday NFL games (way back when the Packers still had hope :)), and can't for the life of me recall whether there were ads or not. We started an hour or so late and watched it in "chase" mode...not sure if we were fast-forwarding over ads or just time-outs/halftime/etc.

[Paul Koenigs]

I pay the $13.99 a month for Youtube to be ad free, but considering dumping that after the price increase as I watch way too much Youtube when there are no ads.

If you watch youtube with the Brave Browser, it blocks the ads for you.

[Brian Elfert]

If you watch youtube with the Brave Browser, it blocks the ads for you.

Youtube has recently been actively blocking those who use ad blockers. I believe in paying for content so I chose to pay for Youtube Premium.