Amazon has started to rollout pre-roll ads on Prime Video. They seem to be randomly playing a short non-skipable 15–30 second ad for their original shows before some Prime content begins.
Cord Cutters News saw this first-hand yesterday when an ad for an Amazon original played before Episode 2 of “Stargate SG-1” Season 7. Now Amazon has had ad-supported free episodes for some time; however, they have always been clearly marked and are typically the first episode of a season giving the viewers a taste of a new show.
The ad we saw was not skippable and was viewed on a laptop streaming off of the Amazon website. When we tested other episodes ads did not pop up. It seems these ads for Amazon originals play almost randomly only on PCs and Macs because we have yet to see any pre-roll ads on players such as the Fire TV or Roku. Yet it is possible they would add pre-roll ads to the Fire TV and Roku versions at a later date.
Netflix tried this a little over a year ago and faced huge backlash—and they even tried to explain the ads away as trailers not ads. It will be interesting to see if Amazon Prime Video faces the same backlash as Netflix did.
We have reached out to Amazon for comment, but we have yet to receive a reply—it being the weekend and all.
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