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If you began watching the latest episode of Reacher or catching up on The Marvelous Mrs Maisel only to find a commercial for beer or dog food interrupts the action, you’re probably wondering why are there ads on Prime Video when there weren’t before. As you likely know, Prime Video is Amazon’s streaming service that offers original programming as well as on-demand entertainment.
Amazon introduced commercials into Prime Video programming on Monday, January 29, 2024. Amazon first introduced an internet video service in 2006 (Amazon Unbox) but added the perk of free access to “unlimited, commercial-free instant streaming of more than 5,000 movies and TV shows” to paying Prime members in February of 2011.
With this latest change to the service initially announced in September 2023, Amazon promised that “Prime Video shows and movies will include limited advertisements” while containing “meaningfully fewer ads than linear TV and other streaming TV providers.” The streamer did not go into specifics about how frequently commercials would appear.
Why are there ads on Prime Video?
Why are there ads on Prime Video? It’s pretty simple: Money. Streamers are, like many industries, facing financial challenges. (Well, CEOs seemingly aren’t but that’s a discussion for another day.) In January 2024, Amazon announced there would be several hundred layoffs in its streaming and studio operations.
“We’ve identified opportunities to reduce or discontinue investments in certain areas while increasing our investment and focus on content and product initiatives that deliver the most impact,” Mike Hopkins, senior vice president of Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios, told employees in a note seen by Reuters.
How to get ad-free Prime Video
Here’s how to get ad-free Prime Video. You’ll have to subscribe to a more expensive tier of the service, which will cost an additional $2.99 per month (on top of the current $14.99 a month, or $139 annually).
Once your subscription has started, you’ll no longer see advertisements while streaming on-demand movies and TV shows from Prime. This applies to all Prime Video profiles that have been linked to your Amazon account. Some titles will include promotional trailers that run before a movie or TV show. These trailers can be skipped but can’t be removed with Prime Video Ad-Free.
Does Prime Video have a free trial?
Does Prime Video have a free trial? Yes, in fact, Amazon offers a 30-day free trial, which is one of the more generous free trials on the market. The free trial comes with the same benefits of Amazon Prime, such as free two-day shipping, Prime Music and more. But perhaps the best part about Amazon Prime Video’s free trial is that customers can sign up for it multiple times.
According to Amazon, users can sign up for Amazon Prime Video’s free trial over and over again as long as it isn’t within the same 12 months. This means that if you haven’t been an Amazon Prime member for more than 12 months, you’re eligible to receive another 30 days for free. Read on for step-by-step instructions for how to sign up for Amazon Prime Video’s free trial and subscribe to Amazon Prime Video channels’ deals.
Visit Amazon Prime Video’s website
Click “Start your 30-day free trial“
Enter your information and payment method, and create an account
Visit Amazon Prime Video’s channels page and select the channels you want to subscribe to
Start watching with Amazon Prime Video channels’ deals
How much does Amazon Prime Video cost?
So how much does Amazon Prime Video cost? Amazon Prime Video costs $8.99 per month for non-Prime members. However, if you’re an Amazon Prime member, Amazon Prime Video comes free with Amazon Prime, which includes Prime Delivery (such as free two-day shipping, free same-day shipping, free release-date delivery and free no-rush shipping), as well as access to Prime Music, Prime Gaming and Prime Reading.
Amazon Prime costs $14.99 per month or $139 per year, which saves subscribers about $36 from the monthly subscription. As mentioned, you’ll have to subscribe to a more expensive tier of the service, which will cost an additional $2.99 per month.
For even more of a deal, students can sign up for Amazon Prime for $7.49 per month, which is half the price of the regular subscription. Like Amazon Prime, Student Prime also comes with a free Amazon Prime Video subscription. If you just want to sign up for Amazon Prime Video, the $8.99 per month price is still less than other streaming services, such as HBO Max, which costs $14.99 per month, and Hulu, which costs $11.99 per month for its no-ads plan. Amazon Prime Video also lets users add on various channels like Showtime, Starz, Discovery Plus and Paramount Plus, each of which also offer their own free trials.
Is Amazon Prime Video worth it?
Is Amazon Prime Video worth it? In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter in 2015, Amazon’s former CEO Jeff Bezos revealed what Amazon Prime Video looks for in original content. “Is this something we can imagine is someone’s favorite show? One way you can think about TV is you can say, ‘I want to make something that millions and millions of people are going to watch,’” he said.
“If that’s your starting point, you paint yourself into a corner and you often end up with homogenized, uninteresting content. If you say, ‘Let’s hire the world’s greatest storytellers. Let’s encourage them to take risks,’ then you’re going to end up with a remarkable story, and remarkable stories always find an audience.”
Bezos also talked about how Amazon Prime Video’s business plan is different than Netflix, which releases a new show almost every week. “Instead of setting a long-range goal, I would just say we’re going to keep pushing forward, making more and more,” he said. “We’re still sort of filling a pipeline. But I like the vision of doing things frequently. The reason we’re doing this is because we want Prime members to value their membership. If you look at the upward trajectory of how much content we’re creating per quarter, it’s increasing very rapidly. I don’t envision that slowing anytime soon.”
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