Amazon Prime Video viewers seeking to avoid ads during shows and movies will have to pay an extra $2.99 a month starting in late January.
The ad-free tier, which will officially roll out Jan. 29, will be on top of the $139 annual cost of an Amazon Prime subscription or the $8.99-a-month standalone Amazon Prime Video subscription.
That means users who choose not to pay the extra fee to go ad-free will start seeing commercials on Prime Video content starting the same day.
Amazon announced its intention to show ads on Prime Video in September, though it said it hoped to show "meaningfully fewer ads than linear TV and other streaming TV providers."
Here is how various streaming services will compare once Amazon's new fee kicks in:
- Amazon Prime Video Ad-Free (standalone): $10.99 a month
- Amazon Prime Video Ad-Free (with Prime subscription): $16.99 a month
- Netflix Standard: $15.49 a month
- Disney+ Ad-Free: $13.99 a month
- Hulu Ad-Free: $17.99 a month
- NBCUniversal's Peacock: $11.99 a month
- Max: $15.99 a month
Advertising has taken a growing share of Amazon’s business, and it now accounts for more than 8% of the company’s total net sales, according to the company’s financial statements. Advertising income surpassed income from subscription services last year, the statements show.
Meanwhile, Amazon indicated it continues to suffer net losses from licensing and distribution of video content. Those losses are emblematic of the industrywide struggle to come up with a viable financial model for streaming and a key reason many streaming platforms have raised their prices.
