I try to avoid ad-powered devices or services as much as possible. Besides privacy implications, there is wasted time and bandwidth to consider among other things. On some systems, ads are often used in malware campaigns as well.
I do not really mind when companys sell products and make it very clear that they are ad-powered. It is your decision to buy it or skip it. I’d prefer an ad-free world, but that seems highly improbable. What I mind is if a company adds advertisement after you bought a device and did not make it clear back then that it could use the device to show you ads frequently or even all the time.
Amazon did this with Prime Video, which it turned from an ad-free streaming service into an ad-powered one for all users. You have to buy an add-on to get rid of ads, and even that does not get rid of all the ads, apparently.
Now, reports are coming in that Echo Show devices are being turned into full-screen advertisement billboards.
Echo Show devices fall into the smart home category. You can communicate with them using your voice and they may be used to control and monitor smart home devices, display photos, play media, help you with cooking, and more.
Some Echo Show devices are quite expensive. The Echo Show 21, Amazon’s latest device, costs $350 right now. Add some much needed peripheral, like an adjustable stand, and you end up paying $440 for the device with stand.
Some customers reported that they noticed full-screen display ads on their Echo Show devices for months, while others have not noticed them at all. It could be that Amazon is rolling this out slowly to go into damage-control-mode if things get out of hand regarding publicity, or that it is testing the waters.
Owners of said devices started to notice the ads, which may appear between photos, when you have set the device to show a photo slideshow. They may also show up when the device is set to show different categories.
The ads appear to be quite intrusive and most users who mentioned them on sites like Reddit do not appear to be pleased. That is understandable, considering that Amazon does not really mention ads at all on the product page on its website. You find mention of ads in the customer reviews though.
Furthermore, as the Verge is reporting, Alexa Plus, Amazon’s next-generation AI-powered voice assistant, is reportedly also showing full screen ads for its own services.
In closing, it appears that Amazon is pushing ads even more than Netflix or Disney do. It is quite problematic for customers who purchased a device that cost several hundred Dollars. They expected a device that would show them a photo slideshow, and only photos of that slideshow, and not an ad between every second or third photo.
Whether Amazon’s strategy regarding advertisement is going to hurt the company in the long run remains to be seen. After all, Netflix, Disney and Co. are also not bleeding users after they introduced ad-supported plans.
Now You: What is your take on this? Would you buy a device with ads? Feel free to leave a comment down below.
Is it possible to buy anything with a screen that doesn’t show ads?
To me, anything that emits any type information about anything when I did not specifically ask for that information, is an ad.
An advertisment, by any other name, is still as annoying.
I called Amazon and told them the ads are way too many and spying on my Amazon searches and displaying them on my Echo Show to display to everyone that comes into my home. They removed most, but not all ads. Let’s bombard Amazon with complaints!
When I want to buy something on Amazon (which is quite often) I tend to search for it on Startpage and then use the link to the product I want on Amazon. Trying to use Amazon’s own search tool is little more than an exercise in futility primarily because the width of the search box reduces to about one cm after login.
But I don’t have any of the devices you describe so no ads either fortunately. Amazon always tries to induce me to signup to Prime during checkout which I avoid like the plague. Actually, I would gladly signup on Amazon UK site because I buy all my DVDs there and it would save me a fortune in shipping fees (the Dutch Amazon site only sells DVDs with Dutch subtitles) and while I insist on English subs. But enquiring about Prime on the UK site results in a big No-No. Prime is only available in the country you live in apparently.
But Amazon has changed to site layout now and the new version is difficult to use if you have a question about a product you need an answer to. I find myself just giving up on the idea and don’t buy it at all. Neither am I interested in creating a Profile, but Amazon won’t accept that it seems and I keep getting banners asking me to create one. What do I need a profile for just to buy something? It’s ridiculous.
Hi, have you considered using a proxy buying service? They buy for you, collect the items, e.g. in the UK, and then bulk ship. Might be cheaper. Have not really looked into Amazon, but you could check out https://www.myus.com/ or https://flycrates.com/ for starters.
I need three userscripts to make Amazon usable.
1)Amazon – Call Out Sponsored Contents
2)Country of origin for Amazon products
3)Amazon CamelCamelCamel + Keepa Price Charts
I would not be able to use Amazon without those scripts.
@ Martin, just calculated a trial package of 10x DVDs shipping from “Online store” in UK and shipping to the Netherlands. Weight 1 kilo. MYUS.com offers the following:
https://i.postimg.cc/T2LbmRVj/flycrates.png
And cheapest carrier was DPD: https://i.postimg.cc/k52JZ5Xw/DPD-carrier.png
Same package with Amazon UK shipping charge last time was £12,00 which my bank calculated to be €14,04. So no advantage at all unfortunately. By the way, MyUS and Flycrates are one and the same company.
Amazon split the last order up into the packages of 3x 3 DVDs + 1x DVD. They all arrived within a week with the single DVD arriving the next day.
Can’t really complain about that, but thanks anyway for trying to help. 🙂
Martin, the article’s author writes: “I try to avoid ad-powered devices or services as much as possible.”
Personally, I avoid ad-powered devices, services and Web sites totally when there is no alternative, be it with ad-blockers be it by paying. Need to say that unavoidable ads on/with a payed service is one step beyond the acceptable.
Concerning Web sites, some will run correctly with an ad-blocker except that one or more of its features will lack, e.g. Ghacks[.]net which has recently conditioned writing comments to allowing connections to third-party servers which appear to be blocked by uBlock Origin. The decision is that of the owner of the site, not that of its administrator. After many years of reading and commenting articles I now therefor read them only.
“Need to say that unavoidable ads on/with a paid service is one step beyond the acceptable.”
Remember the basic cable package (in US, it was called like that. Not sure about other countries)? I paid around $50-$60 a month and it still had ads. Entertainment just returned back to basic cable.
Now, about the reason why we get ads everywhere. Classic entertainment: broadcast TV, basic cable, newspapers, magazines and radio stations had all the ad market to themselves because they had all the eyeballs. Now when all of them died or dying, ad companies are looking to another places to put ads. It’s like when you suddenly stop the river, water will find the other ways to go downstream.