Amazon Prime Video begins showing ads jumping on streaming tiered system

Amazon has officially joined the ranks of companies with ads on their streaming services.

Users watching Prime Video content in the U.S. began automatically having “limited” ads on Monday, roughly four months after the e-commerce giant first signaled its plans to do so. Other countries are also slated to begin seeing ads.

American users must now fork over a $2.99 monthly fee to get an ad-free Prime Video streaming experience instead of the default with them. That is in addition to either the $14.99 they owe Amazon each month for an overall Prime membership or the $8.99 for Prime Video by itself. 

Amazon has kept the price at $14.99 a month for Prime since 2022, a price that is staying flat for those who do not upgrade to go ad free.

No matter which subscription users have, live events and Amazon Freevee programming will keep showing ads, the company said on its website.

CEO Andy Jassy said in late October that Prime Video “continues to be an integral part of the Prime value proposition where it’s often one of the top 2 drivers of customers signing up for Prime.”

Amazon, like other companies with streaming platforms, cited its aim to keep investing in its content as the reason for it bringing ads. Companies have also used ads to drum up more revenue from streaming.

Max, Netflix and Disney+ are among the platforms that have previously debuted memberships with ads.

Some streaming services have also been upping the prices of ad-free options and taking other steps to try to get users to increasingly embrace ad-supported plans.

Netflix has seen particular success with its ad-supported tier. The company, which has restricted account-sharing outside of households, rolled the option out to certain countries in November 2022. 

The number of monthly active Netflix users with the ad-supported plan has reached 23 million, the streaming giant said earlier in the month. It saw a jump of nearly 70% in subscriptions to the tier between the third and final quarters of 2023. 

“Our aim is to make ads a more substantial revenue stream that contributes to sustained, healthy revenue growth in 2025 and beyond,” Netflix said.