I got this message from Amazon yesterday:

This notification and specifically, ‘We ‘aim’ to have meaningfully fewer ads…’ says three things to me:

1. We are making our service worse (or more expensive) than what you have now.

2. ‘You are our product’. Meaningful ads means they are using our streaming data to target us with ads that are more likely to influence us, which also gets more value for them from their advertisers.

3. ‘Fewer ads’ is their way of saying, ‘Not many at first, but we’ll gradually increase them at a pace that doesn’t suddenly piss you off’.

Movie theatres used to have 5 minutes of previews, then 10, then 15. Then there were ads for the concession stand thrown in. Then ads for items sold in the concession stand, then partner brands… And now when you pay for a movie, the ads start when the movie is supposed to start… that way they ensure a captive audience. You can bet that advertisers pay more for a quiet, attentive, popcorn-eating, phone-silenced-and-tucked-away viewer than they do a commercial-skipping viewer sitting at home with many other options and distractions.

Advertisers pay for our attention. And they pay well. We are the product. Google sells our information and attention, so does Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok. The more of our attention they can sell, the more data they collect about us, the more they make.

‘We aim to have meaningfully fewer ads…’ is a lie. It’s decorated like it’s doing you a favour, but it’s about maximizing profits. It’s about you being the product and advertisers being the customer.

‘We’ll be right back after these messages’… (Insert profit-making content here)… This is the process we pay and continue to pay. Our attention is the product; The advertisers are the real customers.