Amazon Prime Video Will Start Showing Ads Next Month

Amazon, in an email to Prime subscribers:

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 is a very compelling value.

“Meaningfully fewer ads” than Apple TV+ or Max is not possible, because they have no ads. Netflix has a lower-priced “with ads” tier, but Prime Video is no peer to Netflix. This is a rinky-dink move that solidifies Prime Video’s status as a second-rate streaming service. Maybe if they hadn’t blown $250 million on Citadel and nearly $500 million on Rings of Power — both of which shows were absolutely terrible — they wouldn’t be in this position.

★ Tuesday, 26 December 2023