Here to remind you that commercials are coming on Monday, January 29th — unless you pay more, of course — in case the holiday chaos caused you to entirely forget about (or miss) Amazon’s announcement that they will be airing in Prime Video the following week.
The announcement of the ad rollout was accidentally made by Amazon shortly after Christmas, when it dropped a charming email in consumers’ inboxes—which most of them were probably not even checking at the time. Your $14.99/month Prime subscription will now cost $17.98, or your $8.99/month standalone Prime Video subscription will cost $11.98, with the addition of the $2.99/month ad-free option. Although you may “preorder” the new tier on Amazon’s website, you won’t be upgraded to the new ad-free plan automatically.
In order to “continue investing in compelling content and keep increasing that investment over a long period of time,” according to Amazon, the move is being made. While Amazon claims to “have meaningfully fewer ads than linear TV and other streaming TV providers,” unsure of the exact number of advertisements that will appear on the ad-supported tier.
The company, which is not the only one making the switch, first revealed plans to add advertisements to Prime Video in September of last year. Disney Plus and Netflix have also begun to air advertisements as streamers explore for other revenue streams through advertising. While Max, Paramount Plus, Hulu, and Peacock all provide ad-supported streaming services, Apple TV Plus is the only remaining option. Prime Video was one of the major holdouts in the rollout of ad-supported streaming.