Amazon announced in September that ads were on the way for Prime Video‘s entertainment content. Now we have a date.
On January 29, commercials will be introduced to series and movies airing on the service in the U.S., UK, Germany and Canada. That will be followed by France, Italy, Spain, Mexico, and Australia later in the year.
The move was announced in a letter sent to subscribers that described the addition of what was termed “limited advertisements” to allow the service “to continue investing in compelling content and keep increasing that investment over a long period of time.”
Among the caveats:
- There will not be ads on content that is purchased or rented.
- Customers in Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam and the Mariana Islands will not see ads rolled out.
Once frowned upon by streamers, a dual subscription-ad model — and the dual revenue stream that comes with it — has become the norm. With Amazon Prime adopting ads across its entire content portfolio on the heels of Netflix and Disney+ introducing ad tiers, Apple TV+ remains the only major streaming platform to employ a pure subscription model.
This marks the next step in Amazon’s advertising ambitions. The company has spent the past several years mounting a major ad offensive, through both live sports as well as ad-supported sibling Prime Video platforms such as Freevee and Twitch. While the $38 billion that Amazon took in from advertising last year is a small share of its $502 billion in total annual revenue, it is growing at a more than 20% quarterly clip.
The text of the message is below.
We are writing to you today about an upcoming change to your Prime Video experience. Starting January 29, Prime Video movies and TV shows will include limited advertisements. This will allow us to continue investing in compelling content and keep increasing that investment over a long period of time. We aim to have meaningfully fewer ads than linear TV and other streaming TV providers. No action is required from you, and there is no change to the current price of your Prime membership.
We will also offer a new ad-free option for an additional $2.99 per month* that you can sign up for here. Prime Video customers have the option to pre-register for the monthly ad-free option, but won’t be billed until January 29.