Last year, Amazon confirmed plans to introduce ads to its Prime Video streaming service in early 2024. Now, that time has come.
As of February 5th, 2024, Prime Video members in Canada, the U.S. and select other markets will have to pay an additional $2.99/month for the privilege of getting an ad-free streaming experience. Otherwise, Amazon says you’ll be faced with a “limited” number of advertisements.
Naturally, the company claims the new fee is necessary “to continue investing in compelling content and keep increasing that investment over a long period of time.” (How else will the streamer be able to afford obscenely expensive shows like Citadel and The Rings of Power that reportedly aren’t being watched by that many people?)
It should be noted that the company actually hasn’t confirmed how frequently these will run during playback but says “We aim to have meaningfully fewer ads than linear TV and other streaming TV providers.”
For reference, Netflix plays four to five minutes of ads per hour, with each ad running for 15 or 30 seconds. Crave also has five minutes of ads per hour, while Disney+ caps the promos to four minutes every hour.
What is different about Amazon’s approach is that it’s simply charging $2.99/month on top of existing memberships, which does streamline the process. With the other streamers, there are lower-cost ad-enabled tiers which make everything a bit more complicated.
If you want to continue watching Prime Video content ad-free, you can subscribe to the $2.99 monthly add-on here.
Image credit: Prime Video
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