Prime Video: Users Will Have to Pay Another $3/Month to Avoid Ads Next Year
Your days of enjoying ad-free Prime Video will be coming to an end if you aren’t willing to pay more. Starting next year, the standard Prime Video subscription will include commercials. Today, the company announced the price to remove the ads: another $2.99/month.
That means the ad-supported Prime Video will be $8.99/month, while the ad-free version will be $11.99/month. Many subscribers get Prime Video for free with their Amazon Prime subscription, but even they will have to pay extra to avoid ads. On today’s earnings call, CEO Andy Jassy said that Prime Video is often one of the top two reasons people sign up for Amazon Prime.
Prime Video announced the shift to an ad-supported tier last month.
Nearly all streaming services now include a less expensive ad-supported tier. Prime Video is taking the path laid out by most of its rivals - adding commercials to the base subscription while charging more to go ad-free. Netflix is the outlier in the space, keeping its standard subscription as the ad-free version while offering a less expensive ad-supported tier. That strategy helped Netflix to its best quarterly addition of subscribers in years.
Reports of Amazon’s interest in introducing an ad-supported Prime Video came last fall when the company began hiring executives with experience in the space. Then in June, the Wall Street Journal reported that the move was imminent. Because the company’s video business is secondary to its retail delivery operations, some onlookers had hoped that Amazon would keep Prime Video ad-free, but as the entire streaming industry moves toward a hybrid model of both ad-free and ad-supported options, it was an inevitability.
While many people initially turned to streaming in part to avoid commercials, as the industry has continued to raise prices far beyond what the original value proposition for streaming was, the audience has become far more receptive to accepting ads than they were a decade ago.
Prime Video is unique because it allows you to add dozens of third-party subscriptions to streaming services like Max, Paramount+, STARZ, NBA League Pass, and MLB.TV. Earlier this week, Prime Video added the option to add Crunchyroll to the service.
Related: What Are All the Premium Streamers You Can Add to Prime Video? ►
Amazon Prime Video
Amazon Prime Video is a subscription video streaming service that includes on-demand access to 10,000+ movies, TV shows, and Prime Originals like “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” “Jack Ryan,” “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” “The Boys,” and more. Subscribers can also add third-party services like Max, Showtime, STARZ, and dozens more with Amazon Prime Video Channels. Prime Video also offers exclusive live access to NFL Thursday Night Football.