Amazon Prime Video will start showing ads unless you pay more

Amazon Prime Video isn’t usually anyone’s first thought when it comes to a streaming service, but it’s an absolute juggernaut thanks to its inclusion in Amazon Prime. But, now, Amazon Prime Video is getting ads unless you pay extra.

Announced today by Amazon, Prime Video will start showing ads within its content starting in “early 2024.”

Prior to this announcement, Prime Video has always been an ad-free service similar to Netflix and others, but with the rise of ad-supported streaming services, it doesn’t really come as a surprise that Prime Vidoe is making this move. Notably, though, Amazon is pushing this pretty aggressively on its customers.

Where Netflix, Disney+, and others introduced an ad-supported plan that was cheaper than the regular plan, Amazon is replacing its current plan with an ad-supported version. Existing customers who wish to continue ad-free streaming will be required to pay an additional $2.99/month on top of their existing Prime subscription.

Amazon explains:

To continue investing in compelling content and keep increasing that investment over a long period of time, starting in early 2024, Prime Video shows and movies will include limited advertisements. We aim to have meaningfully fewer ads than linear TV and other streaming TV providers. Ads in Prime Video content will be introduced in the U.S., U.K., Germany, and Canada in early 2024, followed by France, Italy, Spain, Mexico, and Australia later in the year. No action is required for Prime members. We’re not making changes in 2024 to the current price of Prime membership. We will also offer a new ad-free option for an additional $2.99 per month* for U.S. Prime members and will share pricing for other countries at a later date.

The change is certainly unorthodox, but at the very least it doesn’t mean customers will see a price increase. Amazon Prime currently costs $139/year when billed annually, or $14.99/month. Prime Video on its own runs $8.99/month. The last Amazon Prime price increase was in 2022.

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