Amazon
Amazon Prime Video ads are now live
If you want ad-free content on Prime Video, you’ll have to pay $3 more each month.
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January 29th marks the first day US Prime members will see ads inserted into their Amazon Prime Video content. Starting on February 5, users in Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Austria will also see ads inserted into their Amazon Prime Video content.
The company is offering a new ad-free option for an additional fee of $2.99 per month, on top of the $139 a year that Amazon Prime members already pay.
Customers in several locations, including Puerto Rico, Ireland, and the Channel Islands, won’t be seeing ads in their experience at this time.
Ads coming to Prime Video won’t affect subscriber numbers
While many of Amazon’s competitors introduced ads more subtly by offering a cheaper option, Amazon has forced users into its ad-filled tier as its default.
The company hopes users will choose to stay with the same service while it profits from advertising. Although, with it being an included perk of Amazon Prime, it’s unlikely users will go elsewhere even if they don’t like the ads.
With Prime Video having the most subscribers of any streaming video service in the US, Amazon wins either way, either by selling advertising space or earning another $2.99 per month from subscribers upgrading.
According to Amazon, introducing limited advertisements will allow the company to continue investing in compelling content and increasing that investment over a long period.
Variety states that Morgan Stanley forecasts Prime Video will generate $3.3 billion in revenue over the year. The company aims to have significantly fewer ads than linear TV and other streaming TV providers.
“Starting Jan. 29, Prime Video movies and TV shows will include limited advertisements,” Amazon stated in an email to Prime members last month.
The company has not disclosed how many ads users can expect to see during a single program.
Either way, users are certainly unhappy about the chance, with social media platforms being full of unhappy subscribers.
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