Starting today, January 29, 2024, Amazon's Prime Video subscription offer will be inundated with ads unless you pay an extra $2.99 a month in the US and £2.99 in the UK to get rid of them; Subscribers in Australia will also see a similar situation. price increase (we still don't know how much), but that won't be implemented until the end of this year.
If the news angers you, you are not alone. As one of the few holdouts among the top streaming services that didn't increase its subscription levels last year, we expected Prime Video to skip the subscription ad shakeup that Netflix, Max and Disney had adopted last year. past, especially since it has a free service. advertising-supported television service called Freevee, but it appears that financial pressures have taken hold.
The price increase aligns Prime Video's subscription costs with those of the best streaming services. Its ad-free plan now costs the same as Disney Plus, so it's not the most expensive to subscribe to compared to Netflix, although Max is a little more expensive still.
| Row 0 – Cell 0 | Plan with advertising | Standard without ads |
| main video | $8.99 / £8.99 / AU$9.99 | $10.99 / £10.99 |
| disney plus | $7.99 / £4.99 per month | $10.99 / £7.99 / AU$13.99 per month |
| Netflix | $6.99 / £4.99 / AU$6.99 per month | $15.49 / £10.99 / AU$16.99 per month |
| max. | $9.99 | $15.99 |
The news is a real bummer for anyone who's been waiting to stream the best Prime Video series or the best Prime Video movies, especially since it has one of the largest content libraries from the big streamers with plenty of new Prime Video movies always available. . being added to the service.
However, considering that Amazon recently laid off “several hundred” employees from its streaming division, it seems like the streamer is having to make some serious cost-cutting decisions. Whether this will translate into reduced production and procurement is still up in the air.
An unwanted Amazon delivery
The launch of a more expensive subscription tier comes after Netflix confirmed it will abandon its cheapest ad-free plan globally, following the successful launch of its ad-supported tier in November 2023, which attracted more than eight million subscribers. new registrations in just two months. That means Netflix with ads now represents 10% of total subscribers.
Amazon hopes to have similar success with Prime Video. In fact, analysts have already been speculating about what kind of return this could bring: Lloyd Walmsely, an industry analyst at UBS, estimated that it could earn up to $6 billion each year from new sign-ups to its ad-free plan.
While it's great news for Amazon, there's no certainty about what it will mean for subscribers. Maybe it's time to start jumping between subscriptions, which one of our writers says reduced his streaming bills by 75%, or switch to Amazon's free streaming service, Freevee, to which more than 100 Prime originals have been added Video last year.
Otherwise, the only two other options Prime Video subscribers have if they don't want to watch commercials is to increase their bills or cancel; Here's how to cancel your Amazon Prime membership if you think you'll go the latter route.
