Amazon’s Prime Video will start displaying commercials early in 2024, following other major streaming players including Netflix.
Subscribers in Australia will see advertising later in the year.
Amazon aims to have fewer ads than linear TV and other streaming content platforms. It hasn’t defined this.
Those who want an ad free experience will have to pay a bit more.
Advertising is an increasingly important revenue stream for the giant online retailer, growing faster than other major platforms.
Amazon has about 14.6% of the US digital ad market behind Google and Meta.
Its advertising services grew 22% to $US10.68 billion in the June quarter.
“To continue investing in compelling content and keep increasing that investment over a long period of time, starting in early 2024, Prime Video shows and movies will include limited advertisements,” Amazon said in a statement.
“We aim to have meaningfully fewer ads than linear TV and other streaming TV providers.
“Ads in Prime Video content will be introduced in the US, UK, Germany, and Canada in early 2024, followed by France, Italy, Spain, Mexico, and Australia later in the year.
“No action is required for Prime members. We’re not making changes in 2024 to the current price of Prime membership. We will also offer a new ad-free option for an additional $2.99 per month for US Prime members and will share pricing for other countries at a later date.”
Ben Shepherd, chief investment officer of dentsu, says Amazon adding advertisements is perhaps a bigger deal than the likes of Netflix and Binge due to the amount of retail specific first party data Amazon has access to.
"Amazon has built a lucrative on-deck advertising retail media business through sponsored listings and packaging up of consumer shopping data, but this has been generally limited to the core Amazon.com platform," he says in his LinkedIn newsletter, Signal.
"Adding video ads to Prime Video, which uses the same login as the transactional Amazon.com account means Amazon can now extend that level of targeting to video ads at scale."
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