Amazon is adding ads to Prime Video unless Prime subscribers pay an additional monthly fee to maintain commercial-free programming.
The change, which will go into effect early next year, will see existing Prime members keep their rate, but contend with limited advertisements within TV shows and movies.
Amazon says it aims to have “meaningfully fewer ads than linear TV and other streaming TV providers,” so it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.
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UK residents are among those Prime Members who’ll be subjected to the commercial interruption, along with viewers in Germany, the United States, and Canada early next year.
Avoiding the ads will be possible with an additional fee atop of the Prime Membership. In the United States that’ll be $2.99 a month. That’s all Amazon is prepared to say at the moment, but it’d make sense for Brits to be charged £2.99.
“We will email Prime members several weeks before ads are introduced into Prime Video with information on how to sign up for the ad-free option if they would like,” Amazon says.
The change from Amazon reflects a shift change in the streaming arena. The likes of Netflix and Disney+ have also adopted ad-supported tariffs and/or asked users to pay more to remain ad-free
Of course, the company is keen to point out how compelling the Prime subscription remains, even though ad-free Prime Video is going away as a core benefit.
There’s access to Premier League football in the UK, or Thursday Night Football NFL elsewhere, as well as plenty of live sports and exclusive streaming series like The Boys and The Rings of Power.
There’s the fast, free (it’s not free, you pay for it) delivery, Access to Prime Video channels (you have to pay for those too, mostly), add-free listening of 100 million songs with Amazon Music, cheap medication from Amazon Pharmacy, and access to events like Prime Day.
There’s also access to 3,000 books and mags through Prime Reading, a one-year GrubHub+ membership, unlimited photo storage, food delivery from Whole Foods at no-extra cost and the option to use Prime membership another retailers through Buy With Prime.
