Amazon Prime Video, one of the many perks of getting an Amazon Prime subscription, is going to be showing ads soon while you stream its library of TV shows and movies, including its many original series and films.
Variety reports that the ads will begin appearing sometime in early 2024 in the U.S., U.K., Germany, and Canada. Later, the ads will appear on the service for people in France, Italy, Spain, Mexico, and Australia. In a statement, Amazon claims that Prime Video content will not have as many ads as you will find on old-fashioned TV networks or other ad-based streaming services.
If you want to keep watching those films and shows without ads, Amazon will give you that option, but at the cost of an additional fee of $2.99 a month. There's no word if Amazon will offer an annual fee for Amazon Prime Video without ads. The company already offers a completely free streaming service that's supported by ads, Amazon Freevee.
With this change, nearly all the major streaming services now offer plans with ads and without ads. At the moment, the only major ad-free service is Apple TV+, which charges $6.99 a month.
This is just the latest development in what many have called "streamflation", as streaming services are now less concerned about boosting their subscription numbers and more concerned about actually being profitable.
So far, we have seen Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+ announce major price increases for their ad-free streaming plans, which will start later this fall. Peacock also announced price increases for both its Premium and Premium Plus plans in July. YouTube Premium prices went up by $2 a month to $13.99 a month in July as well.
One smaller streaming service, Starz, is actually bucking this trend. It announced a month ago that it has lowered the price of accessing the service on an annual subscription from $74.99 to $69.99.
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