Amazon Prime Video Streaming Is Getting Ads: What You Need To Know

Amazon is the latest streaming platform that is pushing ads into its video-watching services while simultaneously pushing for a pricier tier to achieve an ad-free experience. Starting early next year, Prime Video will start showing "limited advertisements," the company says in an official update note. The only consolation here is that Amazon will be least aggressive when it comes to shoving ads in viewers' faces.

"We aim to have meaningfully fewer ads than linear TV and other streaming TV providers," promises the company. Ads will start appearing to Prime Video users in the U.S., U.K., Germany, and Canada early next year, and will expand to subscribers in Australia, France, Italy, Mexico, and Spain late in 2024. But there will be a grace period before Amazon raises the price for ad-free watching.

The company says it won't make any changes to the pricing of Prime membership in 2024. But a price hike is definitely on the horizon. Starting with subscribers in the US, Amazon will offer a new ad-free option that would cost an additional $2.99 per month, while subscription updates for other countries will be revealed at a later date.

This won't be the first time that Prime Video subscribers will see ads. When Amazon acquired the rights to stream Thursday Night Football last year, all live football telecasts blasted ads. They continue to do so to date. In a footnote on its latest service update, Amazon says you will continue to see ads on live content, irrespective of whether you pay more for ad-free watching or stick to the ad-supported Prime subscription package.

Moreover, FreeVee and Twitch are both Amazon-owned platforms, and they've had ads for years. Right now, we have no official information on how long the Prime Videos ads will last, nor do we know the exact format. But the assurance that they will be fewer than rival streaming platforms might come as a consolation to concerned subscribers. Amazon won't be the sole major streaming platform to introduce ads, though. 

Netflix and Disney+ push ads, too, and offer ad-free subscription tiers, as well. The only major streaming platform that has remained loyal to a pure subscription format without any ads is Apple. Why did Amazon hike its price and switch to ads? The increasing cost of production. Amazon says it wants to "continue investing in compelling content and keep increasing that investment over a long period of time." After all, spending a billion dollars to produce a single epic show would eventually show itself on the balance sheets.