Marketers slam Prime Video ad experience over frequency and placement

New Delhi: Prime Video’s June ad rollout drew sharp criticism from senior marketers. In a LinkedIn reality check, L’Oréal Professionnel India marketing head Aditi Anand flagged repeat exposures, abrupt mid-scene ad cuts and weak language targeting after ads went live for all Prime members on June 17, 2025.

Anand said she did not upgrade to the ad-free tier and has since seen ads across Prime Video and Amazon’s MX Player, offering a user-side audit of the CTV and mobile experience.

She wrote that ad pods do not feel fixed and often stretch with each break. The ads are unskippable, unlike YouTube’s five-second skip, and the same creative repeats within a session and across sessions, pointing to poor frequency capping.

She also highlighted language mismatches, with the same ad surfacing in Hindi, then in Kannada and Marathi. “Most creatives were 15–20 seconds and felt rushed, with little narrative,” Anand said.

Her sharpest criticism was about placement. “Ads were inserted mid-dialogue, breaking scenes and sometimes re-triggering another ad pod on replay,” she noted.

One user commenting on the post said TV “annoyed less because it respected structure,” a view Anand endorsed.

Sportz Interactive’s Nehal Joshi added that OTT ads are still in early stages and fixes will come, but brands must also rethink edits for each platform. She pointed to the wider global trend of paid ad-free options, citing Meta’s recent UK rollout, and called the cycle “vicious” as brands pay to reach users who pay to avoid ads.

Ajit Singh Kaunsal, former marketing lead at MX Player, said digital has precision tools but often misses the craft of attention. He urged tighter frequency caps, contextual breaks and smarter creative rotation to build preference, not just recall.

At the rollout, Amazon said viewers will see about four to six minutes of ads per hour, with an ad-free add-on at Rs 699 a year or Rs 129 a month in addition to the Prime subscription. Industry observers noted that six minutes an hour translates to up to 18 minutes of ads in a three-hour film.

Ads on MX Player continue regardless of the ad-free upgrade, adding friction for users who watch across both apps. Amazon has argued that ad load is still lighter than linear TV and that it will focus on ad innovation rather than sheer volume.

Key takeaways for platforms:

1. Cap frequency per user and per session and publish those controls to buyers.

2. Insert ads at script-aware markers to avoid mid-line cuts and standardise pod lengths so the experience feels predictable.

3. Enforce language and geo targeting with stricter fallbacks and audit weekly.

4. Support creative sequencing so a full story runs once, followed by varied cutdowns rather than the same tag ten times.

For brands:

1. Build CTV-first edits that tell a story in 15 seconds.

2. Produce multiple cutdowns so rotation does not feel like spam.

3. Plan cross-platform frequency, not just within one publisher.

4. Set language and regional rules in the brief, not as an afterthought.

5. Use attention and completion as buying signals, not CPM alone.