Amazon Implements Ads To Prime Video On January 29
Not only is the method dumb, but there’s still no answer on obvious customer questions
Welp, it’s happening. The next confounding decision in the streaming wars is being realized. Amazon has sent out the letter informing its customers that commercials will be introduced to the movies and series streaming on Prime Video on January 29.
The implementation on that date will be for the United States, United Kingdom, Germany and Canada. It will spread to France, Italy, Spain, Mexico, and Australia later in 2024. This only applies to purely streamed titles. Anything where money is exchanged, ie rentals or purchases, will still be ad-free. In addition, the rollout is completely avoiding the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam and the Mariana Islands.
It should be reiterated that Amazon already has a free, ad-supported streamer, Freevee, formerly IMDB TV, which apparently won’t be impacted by these changes, but the redundancy and doubling in on ad-supported streaming still rubs very wrong. They claim the addition of what they called “limited advertisements” to allow the service “to continue investing in compelling content” and promise to grow that investment over the long-term. This comes as some modern streamers like Paramount+ and Peacock launched with both ad-supported and ad-free tiers while Netflix and Disney+ added theirs well after they were already into the game as well. Apparently Apple TV+ is the last one standing without an ad-supported tier.
The fact is however, their ad-supported tiers were set at a cheaper price to what the ad-free tier would continue to be. What Prime Video is doing is keeping everyone at the price point of ad-free as it stands, but replacing it with ad-supported, increasing the price of ad-free by $2.99 and forcing all the customers who want ads to manually get the ad-free plan back on their own by/for said increase. Here is exactly what the company wrote in the notifying email:
We are writing to you today about an upcoming change to your Prime Video experience. Starting January 29, Prime Video movies and TV shows will include limited advertisements. This will allow us to continue investing in compelling content and keep increasing that investment over a long period of time. We aim to have meaningfully fewer ads than linear TV and other streaming TV providers. No action is required from you, and there is no change to the current price of your Prime membership.
We will also offer a new ad-free option for an additional $2.99 per month* that you can sign up for here. Prime Video customers have the option to pre-register for the monthly ad-free option, but won’t be billed until January 29.
Source: Deadline