David Farnor | On 06, Jan 2024

Amazon Prime Video will be introducing adverts from 5th February 2024.

The online giant was one of the first movers in what is now a rapidly growing ad-supported streaming landscape with the launch of Amazon Freevee (formerly IMDb TV), a platform that gives non-subscribers films and TV shows to watch for free but with adverts. Since then, Disney+ and Netflix UK have waded into the same waters, with lower-priced tiers including adverts and higher-priced tiers giving users no ads and higher video quality.

The strategy has emerged as a trend among VOD platforms in response to an increasingly fragmented and competitive landscape, with streamers relying on exclusive, original content to distinguish themselves from rivals, while also facing production costs and the responsiblity to pay talent fairly in an online age that involves everything from AI to new opportunities for royalties. At the same time, customers are struggling to pay bills amid a cost of living crisis and choosing between streaming services rather than subscribing to multiple platforms.

Amazon has confirmed that it will be introducing its own advertising from 5th February 2024. It has previously promised it will show “meaningfully fewer ads than linear TV and other streaming TV providers”.

In an email to customers, it said that “this will allow us to continue investing in compelling content and keep increasing that investment over a long period of time”. There will be no change to the cost of an Amazon Prime membership, but customers will be pushed to pay an additional £2.99 per month to have no adverts on Amazon Prime Video. (This will be separate to Amazon Freevee, which remains a free, ads-supported platform.)

At the moment, though, Amazon has noted that “customers in the Republic of Ireland, Channel Islands, and Isle of Man won’t see ads in their experience”.

 

Amazon Prime Video to introduce adverts in 2024

23rd September 2023

Amazon Prime Video will introduce adverts to its streaming platform in 2024.

Adverts have rapidly become part of the future strategy for most major streaming services, as the digital landscape tries to reconcile a business model from the tech world with the long-standing entertainment industry. After a focus on growth in subscriber numbers and fragmented, exclusive content libraries, numerous headwinds have arisen, including commercial competition, consumers’ stretched wallets, high production costs and the need to pay talent fairly in an online age that involves everything from AI to new opportunities for royalties.

Now, many VOD providers have turned back to a stalwart of the TV industry to solve the problem: advertising, one of the key things they used to distinguish themselves from traditional TV broadcasts in the first place. Ad-supported streaming has allowed companies to offer customers a free or low-cost alternative to a full-priced subscription, including a lower-priced tier for Disney+ and Netflix UK and Amazon’s own free option, Amazon Freevee.

Now, Amazon Prime Video is following in Freevee’s footsteps by adding adverts to Amazon Prime Video.

Amazon has promised that this will involve “limited advertisements”, with “meaningfully fewer ads than linear TV and other streaming TV providers”.

There will be no change to the price of Amazon Prime membership cost, but there will be a new, ad-free option. It will “share the price of that option at a later date”, but it will presumably be a more expensive option than the standard Amazon Prime membership. Amazon has said that it will “email Prime members several weeks before ads are introduced into Prime Video with information on how to sign up for the ad-free option if they would like”.

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