Amazon Prime Video will soon start showing ads on its cheapest plan. (Image: Warner Bros)
Last September, Amazon announced that it would add more advertising to its Prime Video subscription next year. Now it’s clear: from then on 29 January 2024 The usual tariff will be converted into an advertising-financed model, like The Verge reported. If you don’t want advertising, you have to pay more.
However, this date currently only applies to the US market, as the corresponding customer notification from Amazon has not yet appeared, at least in this country.
However, in Amazon’s original announcement, Europey was explicitly stated as one of the first markets to be affected by the switch to Prime Video with advertising. As a result, January 29th is a very realistic date for the change in this country.
For US customers, the adjustment means the following: The regular Prime subscription will continue to cost $15 per month (or $139 annually), but will include the announced advertisements.
If you don’t want advertising, you’ll have to pay $18 a month in the future. The standalone tariff, which only includes Prime Video without the other Amazon benefits, is also becoming more expensive: instead of $9 per month, you have to pay $12 per month.
The number of advertisements was not mentioned; Amazon only promises that it wants to show “less advertising than classic cable television.” It is also not yet known how high the price adjustment will be for an ad-free Prime tariff in Europey.
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An increase of between two and three dollars per month at least sounds realistic here, so that the Prime subscription, which previously cost 9 dollars per month, should end up between 11 and 12 dollars per month.
It also remains to be seen to what extent the annual subscription to Amazon Prime – currently 90 dollars per year – will be affected by the new costs. Here too, however, there is likely to be an increase, which, similar to the previous tariffs, should amount to 110 to 120 dollars per year.
Amazon is ultimately following the trend that other streaming providers have set in recent months: Netflix and Disney+ also recently announced an ad-financed subscription and adjusted the prices for ad-free tariffs:
Now the question is: Will you continue to use Prime Video if there are more advertisements or accept the increased costs in order not to have to see any advertisements? How much can the monthly subscription cost in this case so as not to encourage you to cancel? Or is the Prime Video offer uninteresting to you anyway?
