Amazon has officially said when ads will start showing on Amazon Prime Video for everyone. The company told users in an email that ads will start running on the streaming service in the U.S. on January 29 of next month.
The date (early 2024 was all we were told before) is what’s new. We already knew that ads were going to be added to Amazon, and we even knew how much it would cost to avoid them. If you add an extra $2.99 a month to your Prime bill, you can keep watching videos the way they are now. If not, you won’t have to do anything and your membership fee will stay the same. You’ll just start seeing ads before you start watching “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” all at once.
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Amazon sent you an email with a link that lets you pre-register for the monthly choice that doesn’t have ads. You can sign up for that here. You won’t be charged until the ads start running on January 29, but you can stop at any time. The link to pre-register says that you may still see ads on Freevee, during live shows like Thursday Night Football, or if you pay for certain channels.
Amazon says that the number of ads will be “limited” and “meaningfully fewer” than on TV or other streaming services. Anything you buy or rent through Prime Video will not have ads added to it.
The business said, “This will allow us to keep investing in interesting content and keep increasing that investment over a long period of time.”
Also, ads will start running in the UK, Germany, and Canada on February 5. Later in the year, they will run in France, Italy, Spain, Mexico, and Australia. You’re lucky if you live on Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, or the Mariana Islands. You won’t see any ads.
As IndieWire wrote before, this move to Amazon means that Apple TV+ is now the only big streaming service that doesn’t have ads. This is because Netflix, Disney+, and Paramount+ all rushed to release services with ads. But Amazon also has a big advantage over Netflix and the others because it already has e-commerce built in. This is why companies really want to advertise with Amazon. As part of its Q3 earnings, the company made $12 billion from advertising services. And that number will keep going up until everyone who doesn’t pay an extra $2.99 a month starts seeing ads.
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Every business wants to get a piece of that money if they want their streaming services to finally start making money. Disney and Paramount have been saying for a while that they will start making money, but as part of IndieWire’s expectations for the industry in 2024, we think that only one streamer will start making money next year.
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