Amazon plans to start rolling out ads on Prime Video movies and TV shows in early 2024, with an ad-free tier also being made available for an additional fee.
The official announcement from Amazon reveals that ads in Prime Video content will be introduced in the U.S., UK, Germany, and Canada in early 2024, followed by France, Italy, Spain, Mexico, and Australia later in the year, with the ad tier becoming the default option for Prime Video as part of the Amazon Prime membership.
Prime Video is currently available for those with a Prime membership, which costs $14.99 a month, while a standalone subscription to Prime Video is $8.99 per month. Prime members will not need to take any further action if they are happy to proceed with the ad tier, and the price of Prime membership will remain the same.
Users who want to continue watching Prime Video without advertisements can still do so, though they will have to pay an extra fee on top of their current subscription costs. The ad-free option will be available for an additional $2.99 per month for U.S. Prime members, with pricing for other countries coming at a later date.
Of course, an ad-supported tier for a video streaming service is not a novel idea, as several of Prime Video's competitors, including Max, Disney+, and more recently, Netflix, have all introduced cheaper subscription tiers, but with the caveat of having to watch ads before streaming a movie or show on the service.
Reports of Prime Video's ad-supported tier first surfaced in June when Amazon was said to be in the "early stages" of discussing the rollout of ads on its streaming service. According to the latest update, those ads will be "limited", as the goal is "to have meaningfully fewer ads than linear TV and other streaming TV providers".
Amazon has also said the decision to run ads during the streaming of Prime Video content will help it "continue investing in compelling content and keep increasing that investment over a long period of time", adding to its vast selection of movies and series, which currently includes Amazon Originals such as The Boys, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, The Wheel of Time, and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.
Adele Ankers-Range is a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. Follow her on Twitter.
Cover image credit: Amazon.
