Amazon Prime Video Is Adding Ads And Increasing Ad-Free Price

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It seems the tiers across the streaming kingdom are growing. And they’re making you make the switch.

Amazon announced on Friday that Prime Video will start featuring limited ads in early 2024. On top of that, this new ad supported tier will become the default. The company says there won’t be a price increase for a regular Prime subscription next year, but in fact those who want to continue watching Prime Video without commercials will be paying $2.99 more every month. And it’s not as if existing customers can just go on and their ad-free viewing continue automatically as normal. Amazon will notify those users a few weeks ahead of the introduction of the ad-supported tier with instructions for how to maintain the ad-free experiences themselves.

Prime Video is the latest streamer following Netflix, Disney+ and what was then HBO Max in creating an ad-supported tier after launch, which Hulu, Peacock and Paramount+ as an additional revenue stream to subscription fees. Amazon also already has a free, ad-supported streamer, Freevee, which apparently won’t be impacted by these changes. The company says incorporating ads on Prime Video will allow longer-term investment in programming original series and live sports like the NFL’s Thursday Night Football. Maintaining those rights costs them about $1 billion every year. As for how many ads, they claim there would be “meaningfully fewer” commercials than linear TV.

The ad-supported tier will be introduced in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany and Canada early next year. France, Italy, Spain, Mexico and Australia will be getting it later in 2024.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter