Amazon Prime users can kiss goodbye perk that is no longer free

Amazon Prime users can now kiss streaming movies and TV shows ad-free goodbye as Amazon has officially added advertisements to Prime Video. The company warned users of the change in September 2023 and later sent an email out to customers announcing the date of the change and the option users have to stream ad-free for an additional $3 a month.

“Starting Jan. 29, 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,” read the email. “We aim to have meaningfully fewer ads than linear TV and other streaming TV providers.”

The announcement sparked backlash from some users who claimed that the change was a dealbreaker, and that they will be canceling their Prime subscription altogether. What made the change sting even more was that Amazon hiked the prices for its Prime subscription last year for some customers in May from $6.99 a month to $9.99 a month, according to an email sent to a customer.

Amazon isn’t the only streaming service to reach its hand out for ad-free content. Netflix unveiled in its fourth-quarter earnings report last week that its customers in Canada and the U.K. will be removed from its retired Basic ad-free plan, which is the cheapest option for customers who like to stream content without ads, and will be forced to consider the more expensive ad-free streaming plans it offers.

In this photo illustration, the logos of media service providers Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney + and Hulu are displayed on the screen of a tablet.

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“The ads plan now accounts for 40% of all Netflix sign-ups in our ads markets and we’re looking to retire our Basic plan in some of our ads countries, starting with Canada and the UK in Q2 and taking it from there,” said Netflix in its fourth-quarter earnings report.

Last year, YouTube also started cracking down on users who use ad-blockers to stream videos on the platform ad-free. The platform released a pop-up notification for users using ad-blockers which warned them that they can only watch three videos on the platform before video playback is disabled. The notification also advertised its YouTube Premium service where users can have ads removed from content for $13.99 a month.

Streaming services make billions off of advertising revenue yearly. According to a recent report from Digital TV Research, it predicted that streaming services will have earned $6 billion from ad-supported subscriptions in 2023 and could make even $20 billion from these services in 2029.