Amazon made headlines in late December when it announced a forthcoming move to incorporate advertisements within its Prime Video service in the United States.
As it turns out, American streamers won’t be the only ones subjected to ads within Prime Video.
This week, Prime members in the United Kingdom started receiving notifications that they, too, will have to stream content from Prime Video with short ad breaks, though streamers will not be subjected to commercial interruptions until at least February.
In a statement, Amazon said access to Prime Video will continue to be included as part of a customer’s Prime membership, which costs £9 per month or £99 per year (about $11.40 per month or $114.00 per year). Amazon said the cost of Prime will not change through 2024.
As in the United States, streamers in the United Kingdom who want ad-free access to Prime Video’s on-demand content will have the option to pay slightly more each month for the privilege of removing them.
Amazon has not revealed how much U.K. customers will have to pay to remove ads from Prime Video content, saying the cost will be revealed at a later date. Stateside, Amazon says the cost for ad-free Prime Video streaming will be $3 per month or $36 per year on top of the usual cost of their Prime membership. Some content, including Thursday Night Football games, will continue to have advertisements, Amazon says, and the same will be true for the ad-free option in the United Kingdom as well.
“We aim to have meaningfully fewer ads than linear TV and other streaming TV providers,” an Amazon spokesperson said this week, adding that the company intends to “e-mail Prime members several weeks before ads are introduced into Prime Video with information on how to sign up for the ad-free option if they would like.”
Amazon says Prime members enjoy a number of other benefits beyond Prime Video, including access to unlimited one-day delivery on millions of items across different departments by way of the Amazon store; access to the Prime Video Channels marketplace to subscribe to services like Starzplay, Paramount Plus and Discovery Plus; ad-free listening to around 100 million songs and podcast episodes through Amazon Music; unlimited photo storage through Amazon Photos; and try-before-you-buy shopping on eligible clothing items sold through the Amazon store.
