Prime Video set to increase ad deluge, but you can avoid it

Amazon Prime Video might be bringing you access to Champions League football and top entertainment like The Boys and Fallout for your Prime subscription, but unless you’re prepared to pay extra to avoid ads, be prepared to see even more of them.

Amazon is planning to subject standard Prime subscribers to more ads within the Prime Video app after introducing them last year. That’s according to a Financial Times report saying more ads will be infecting our eye-balls early in the new year.

It’s not clear by how much the volume of ads will be increased by, but the FT says its coming for those not paying £2.99 in the UK or $3.99 over in the US to avoid them.

In a statement to the FT, the company said it has started with a “very light load” as a “gentle entry” into advertising in January this year. So expect a less gentle approach come 2025.

Even though the ads are an annoyance, the original roll has been a success as far as Amazon and its advertising partners are concerned. It says the ad-funded version of Prime Video is watched by 19 million people in the UK, while 100 million viewers in the US are on the platform. Amazon is being pretty celebratory about it all at an industry gathering this week.

“Last year, we celebrated the news that we were bringing ads to Prime Video’s premium entertainment content in the UK. Now we are here to show you what that means in practice,” aid Phil Christer, the MD of Amazon Ads in the UK told London-based ads bods (via Deadline).

“By combining award-winning TV series and films, billions of first-party signals, and leading ad tech, we are helping brands deliver relevant ad experiences at an entirely new scale. These campaigns aren’t limited to brands that sell in our store either, we are able to help brands understand the impact of their upper funnel streaming TV campaigns on lower funnel outcomes like sales and sign-ups, regardless of where the customer ends their journey.”

So hooray for Amazon and the advertisers, I suppose. For those hoping to just enjoy the entertainment they already pay for through a Prime subscription without too much commercial interruption, the news isn’t good.

Still, watching ads still beats watching The Rings of Power, eh?