Amazon Prime Video subscribers aren’t the only streaming customers being subjected to longer commercial breaks lately. Warner Bros. Discovery’s (WBD) Max has increased the amount of commercials it shows to US subscribers from approximately four minutes per hour to about six minutes per hour.
A US support page for Max currently says that subscribers to Max with ads “can expect about 6 minutes of ads per hour.” But PCWorld noticed this week that this differs from what Max used to claim, which as recently as February was “about 4 minutes” of ads an hour, per the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. Some of Max’s geographies have smaller ad loads. For example, WBD's support page for Saint Kitts and Nevis says Max ad subscribers should expect about four minutes of ads hourly.
A 50 percent increase in the duration of commercials that US subscribers see puts Max’s ad load on par with that of Prime Video, which AdWeek reported last week also increased its ad load from four minutes per hour to six minutes per hour. For comparison, Netflix shows four to five minutes of ads per hour, according to earlier PC World reporting, and Peacock shows to five to seven minutes of ads hourly, per The Streamable.
© HBO
Warner Bros. Discovery will split its business into two publicly traded companies, with one focused on its streaming and studios business and the other on its television network businesses, including CNN and Discovery.
The US media giant said the move would unlock value for shareholders as well as create opportunities for both businesses, breaking up a group created just three years ago from the merger of Warner Media and Discovery.
Warner Bros. Discovery last year revealed its intent to split its business in two, a plan first reported by the Financial Times in July last year. The company intends to complete the split by the middle of next year.
© Eli Adé/Warner Bros.
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