New Amazon Alexa Policy Banning Ads?

Under the radar, Amazon made some changes to its Alexa Skills Developer agreement.

To help lessen the amount of advertisements that appear on Alexa’s voice apps, the new version of the agreement is banning any apps that have “any advertising for third-party products or services.” The only places where ads will still appear is through streaming music and flash-briefing apps.

While Amazon is continuing to work toward its goal of becoming the leader in voice computing technology, the ban on ads is not sitting well with developers. These app makers argue that without the use of ads, it’s difficult to make money. Others are hoping Amazon will introduce another way to monetize the Alexa platform.

As we reported earlier this week, Amazon made the technology for Alexa, Amazon Lex, available to developers to build their own apps out with a voice component.