Prime members were recently emailed to inform them of a change to Amazon Prime Video. Accordingly, there will be advertising on Amazon’s streaming service in the future – unless you decide to pay a surcharge on top of the Amazon Prime subscription price. The change will come into force in February.
Amazon Prime Video: This is what customers face
The letter states: “Starting February 5th, titles on Prime Video will contain limited advertising. This allows us to continue investing in top entertainment and live sports content and increase this investment in the long term. Our goal is to show significantly less advertising than traditional television networks and other video streaming providers. There is no need for you to take any action and the current price of your Prime membership will not change.” An annoying change for all existing customers. After all, streaming users are used to not seeing annoying advertising when they pay a monthly fee. Anyone who would like to stream without advertising clips in the future will be referred to a new additional offer: “We will also offer a new ad-free option for an additional €2.99 per month.”
The company must operate more profitably
It has long been known that Amazon is struggling with its pricing policy and needs to create new ways to continue to be financially successful. That already meant layoffs and the cancellation of Prime services such as the newsstand for Kindle. There will also be additional subscription costs for the planned AI boost for the Alexa language assistant.
But Amazon is not the only company that now offers advertising-financed subscriptions. You can also choose a model with advertising for Netflix and Disney+:
You currently pay 8.99 euros per month or 89.99 annually for Amazon Prime. The optional surcharge of 2.99 euros per month would result in additional costs of almost 36 euros. The annual subscription including ad-free streaming would cost around 125 euros. On the other hand, if you pay monthly, it would be 145 euros.