Amazon to debut ads on Prime Video

Another day, another ad-supported streaming service: Amazon is rolling out ads on Prime Video starting in early 2024, the company announced on Friday.

According to Amazon, subscribers in the US, UK, Germany, Canada, France, Italy, Spain, Mexico, and Australia will start seeing ads on the service throughout next year. Unless they want to cough up more for an ad-free tier: In the US, subscribers can pay an additional $2.99 to view content without ads, though live programming will continue to have advertising. Pricing for other countries is not available yet.

Amazon Prime members currently get access to Prime Video through that membership, which costs $139 a year or $14.99 on a monthly basis.

Amazon did not provide specifics on ad length or load, though in a blog post announcing the news, it wrote that the platform will aim to have “meaningfully fewer ads than linear TV and other streaming TV providers.”

The company is not new to streaming ads. Ads currently appear in live content on Prime Video including Thursday Night Football, on Twitch, and on its free, ad-supported streaming platform, Freevee. It also joins several other streamers who offer ad-supported tiers, including Disney, Hulu, Max, Netflix, and Paramount+.

Natalee Geldert, head of brand media at PMG, expects that clients will “want to dip their toe in the water” to try out advertising on Prime. “Amazon’s a little bit late to the game, but I think with the depth of consumer insights that they have…they will probably release a better go-to-market strategy than we’ve seen from some other streaming providers,” she told us.

Several streaming services have increased prices for their ad-free tiers as of late, in some cases as a way to direct users to their ad-supported offerings.