Amazon Prime customers will soon start to see ads play while they watch Prime Video shows and movies unless they pony up an extra fee every month. The previously announced plan to start incorporating ads into streaming content now has a start date: January 29, 2024. The company announced the date in an email to customers this week saying that the move will allow Amazon to “continue investing in compelling content and keep increasing that investment over a long period of time.”
Customers can pay an additional $2.99 per month to avoid those advertisements. Amazon Prime currently costs $14.99 per month or $139 annually. Prime Video can be subscribed to individually for $8.99 per month. The new charge for ad-free streaming would bring Amazon Prime customers’ subscriptions to just under $18 per month. Standalone Prime Video customers would pay just under $12.
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Which streamers offer ad-free content for cheaper than Prime Video?
Amazon Prime Video is not the first streaming service to raise subscription rates and push ads upon customers. Disney+, Hulu, Max, Netflix and Paramount+ all include ads on their cheapest subscription tiers. Amazon first announced that it would incorporate ads for all users in September, but that doesn’t make it any easier for customers to hear the official start date now.
The Streamable reports that in the past year, streaming plans without ads have gotten 25% more expensive across the industry, which leaves few options for customers who want to pay less than $11.99 per month to stream without the annoyance of ads. Only Apple TV+ offers a less expensive plan without ads at $9.99 per month – and that platform has one of the smallest streaming libraries in the industry.
Amazon Prime Video customers are not happy
Customers were not happy to hear the news, to say the least, with many taking to Twitter to air their frustrations. “I already pay them $140 a year for Prime. This is just greed,” one user wrote. “I’m sick of platforms ruining our experiences with ads,” someone else said.
Some customers are canceling subscriptions
Others wrote that they were considering canceling their subscriptions over the announcements. “I have been on the verge of canceling Prime anyway once my student discount ends and this seals the deal,” one customer wrote.
“What an insult!”
“This is ridiculous. It IS a price increase if we want to maintain the state of our current service,” someone else pointed out.
“The pivot back to traditional cable”
“So, in aggregate, we are all paying much more than we used to just for cable and have to endure more ads,” one fed-up customer wrote. “We’ve all been scammed.”
