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Entertainment

04th Feb 2024

Prime Video making a major change tomorrow and viewers won’t be happy

Callum Boyle

The state of streaming is changing.

Many people will agree that the best thing about streaming sites is the lack of advertising – that’s what we’re paying the money for, right?

Unfortunately, a lot of viewers are going to have to rethink that when Prime Video bring in a major change to their site on Monday, February 5.

The Amazon streaming giant announced last month that it will be bringing in “limited advertisements” to allow it “to continue investing in compelling content”.

Prime Video making a major change tomorrow and viewers won’t be happy

In an email sent to Prime Video users earlier in the year, the company wrote: “Starting February 5, Prime Video movies and TV shows will include limited advertisements. This will allow us to continue investing in compelling content and keep increasing that investment over a long period of time.

“We aim to have meaningfully fewer ads than ad-supported TV channels and other streaming TV providers.”

Amazon told customers that no action is required on their end and there will not be a change to the current price of their membership.

However, the email also stated that they are providing a new “ad-free” option for an additional £2.99 per month.

The US and Canada were the first to be introduced to the new measures, kicking off on January 29.

Australia, Mexico, Italy, France and Spain are also set to have ads launched on Prime Video by the end of 2024.

The update follows a slew of streamers introducing new subscription methods. Netflix introduced an ads plan in 2022 in some countries, which provided a cheaper subscription cost in return for watching 4-5 minutes of ads for every hour of content.

Late last year, Netflix also announced that it was raising prices for its subscribers in the UK, US and France.

Disney+ was another streamer to announce plans to introduce an “ad-supported” subscription plan in Ireland and the UK, which will cost £4.91 for the basic plan with adverts when it is launched in November.

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