Amazon is following in the footsteps of its competitors by adding commercials to its streaming service.
Prime Video will rollout ad breaks in movies and TV shows in 2024.
Disney+, Netflix, and Max are all relatively new to the ad-supported streaming game, having spent their initial years ad-free.
Ads will initially roll out to the U.S., U.K., Germany, and Canada, followed by France, Italy, Spain, Mexico, and Australia later in the year.
If you want to keep Prime Video an ad-free experience, you’ll need to shell out an additional $2.99 for the luxury.
Prime Video is home to shows like The Boys, Reacher, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, and The Wheel of Time — all of which have never aired with ads.
However, sports telecasts like Thursday Night Football already air with commercial interruption, so it’s not entirely new to the service.
This isn’t the first time Amazon is dipping into ad-supported TV: The company owns Freevee, the home of Almost Paradise and Neighbours.
Until now, though, the ad-supported service has been free, but with the market’s current trajectory, it’s hard to imagine that lasting much longer.
Netflix and other streaming services have reported more robust numbers when including cheaper ad-free tiers, but Prime Video isn’t releasing a more affordable tier.
Instead, people will pay the same as they do now, but they will need to pay for the ad-free add-on if they don’t want ads.
There are, of course, many benefits to an Amazon subscription, so it will be interesting to see if the move affects the subscriber base.
At one point, it seemed the streaming services would add endless content for a low price, but now, all of them are rising to the point that people are questioning the value for money.
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Paul Dailly is the Associate Editor for TV Fanatic. Follow him on Twitter.
