Amazon Prime Video Advertising Was A Mistake

Amazon has caught quite a lot of anger from paying Prime Video customers in the last few days. The reason was that advertising suddenly appeared in movies. Now it is said that the whole thing is based on an error and has been fixed.

Specifically, it was about advertising that was displayed to Amazon Prime Video customers when they paused a movie and started it again. Then – unlike usual – a commercial was displayed, for example for a new production by Amazon Studios. There was no third-party advertising to be seen. Nevertheless, this was quite annoying if, for example, you had only stopped briefly for a break and then couldn’t continue watching the movie right away.

Amazon support unable to get the problem in the beginning

These commercials in between were new, until now Amazon only had commercials before series and movies. Many users got upset on the Internet – after all, the tenor was – you pay enough monthly subscription fees, so there’s no need for advertising. Amazon then initially “talked past” the users’ requests, writing to one user on Twitter, for example: “Occasionally, some Prime Video content contains video clips before or after the video. These are to help our customers discover new content. We’ve taken your critical feedback on board.”

However, users weren’t upset about ads before or after, but about the spots in the middle of movies. Now there is a clarification to the story. It looks like the delivery of the clips wasn’t supposed to happen that way at all. Speaking to a German online magazine T-Online, a spokesperson explained, “Amazon occasionally uses skippable trailers before or after Prime Video content to draw customers’ attention to new series and movies on Prime Video. In individual cases, trailers were also unintentionally played during movie playback in recent days. This bug has since been fixed.”