Do you enjoy the commercial-free experience of Amazon’s Prime Video?
Soon, you’ll have to open your wallet and pay more to continue watching the video streaming service without advertisements.
Amazon recently announced that it will be adding commercials to Prime Video content, but consumers willing to pay extra can forgo these advertisements.
In this article, I’ll walk you through what Amazon is saying about this product change and when you can expect to experience it.
Amazon Will Add Commercials To Prime Video Content in 2024
Consider this your warning: Prime Video will be inserting commercials during movies and TV shows beginning in early 2024.
“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,” Amazon said in a press release. “We aim to have meaningfully fewer ads than linear TV and other streaming TV providers.”
Those of you who watch Amazon’s Thursday Night Football coverage each week are likely already acclimated to the idea of advertisements on your Amazon streaming feed.
This is hardly a groundbreaking decision. In fact, Prime Video was one of the final holdouts among its peers when it comes to keeping commercials out of on-demand content.
Key competitors Netflix and Disney+ recently decided to take the plunge into ad-supported tiers. And services like Max, Peacock and Paramount+ have long used commercials to boost streaming profits.
How You Can Pay Your Way Out of Commercials on Prime Video
If you’re strongly opposed to the idea of commercials in your Prime Video content, there’s a way out. But it’ll cost you.
Amazon announced that U.S. customers will be able to pay an additional $2.99 per month to avoid seeing commercials in their on-demand Prime Video content.
That sounds small, but it is not insignificant.
That extra $3 per month adds up to $36 per year and is a 26% price increase on the $8.99 charge for standalone Prime Video subscriptions.
Full Amazon Prime subscribers would have to pay this fee on top of their monthly ($14.99) or annual ($139.99) subscription fee.
Final Thoughts
It was only a matter of time until Amazon joined the ad revenue party with its Prime Video product.
Amazon already has advertising relationships in place with its popular free streaming service Freevee. And the paid video streaming service market has been trending toward a value proposition choice for streamers between ad-supported and ad-free tiers.
The value of an Amazon Prime subscription varies pretty significantly from household to household. Some people may consider video streaming a big part of it, others may consider it a free add-on to a subscription they use primarily for shopping and free shipping.
With that in mind, it’s probably best to evaluate this product versus competitors at standalone pricing: Prime Video will now cost $8.99 for the ad-supported tier and $11.98 for the ad-free experience.
That places the monthly cost for an ad-supported subscription slightly more expensive than Netflix ($6.99) and Disney+ ($7.99), but cheaper than Max ($9.99).
Does that seem like a good value to you? Will you pay extra to go ad-free in 2024? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the Clark.com community.
