Amazon Prime Video has ads now; here’s how to stop them

As of now, the standard Amazon Prime Video plan comes with ads. Previous to January 29, 2024, Prime Video content was almost completely ad-free (we’ll detail the exceptions in a moment).

Amazon announced back in September that ads would be coming to Prime Video, but it waited until December to reveal the exact date when ads would arrive. 

Well, the price of Prime Video with ads will be exactly what Amazon Prime members are paying right now: $14.99 a month or $139 a year.  

That price includes all other Prime benefits, such as free shipping for products purchased on Amazon, free Amazon Fresh grocery deliveries, Amazon Music, unlimited Amazon Photo storage, Prime Gaming, Prime Reading, and more. 

Looked at another way, current Amazon Prime Video viewers will soon be paying the same amount for what was formerly an ad-free viewing experience. 

Want to keep Prime Video ad-free? If so, it’ll cost you an extra $2.99 a month, in addition to the standard $14.99/month price of a Prime membership.

You can visit this web page to upgrade your Prime Video plan to the new ad-free version. 

Even if you signed up for an annual Prime membership before Amazon’s Prime Video with ads announcement, you’ll still have to pay $2.99 a month to upgrade to the ad-free version.

If that doesn’t sound fair, there are other Prime members who agree with you, and a class-action lawsuit is in the works.

Yes, some Prime Video content already comes with ads, namely Thursday Night Football and other live sporting events.

It’s worth noting that if you pony up for the ad-free version of Prime Video, you’ll still see commercial breaks during TNF and live sports. 

Amazon also has its Freevee ad-supported streaming service; but strictly speaking, that’s not part of Prime Video. 

Initially, Prime Video with ads will launch in the U.S., U.K., Germany, and Canada, with France, Italy, Spain, Mexico, and Australia to follow “later in the year.” 

While Prime Video with ads is coming to most of the U.S. starting January 29, there are a few U.S. territories where it won’t go live yet, including Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, the Mariana Islands, and American Samoa. 

Amazon hasn’t detailed exactly how many ads per hour viewers will have to sit through, but it has promised “meaningly fewer ads than linear TV and other streaming TV providers.” 

Generally speaking, most streaming services dish out 4 to 5 minutes of ads an hour on their ad-supported plans. 

Nope, the commercials are only for streaming Prime Video titles, not for specific (streaming) TV shows or movies that you’ve purchased or rented on Amazon. 

Yes, you can still stream Prime Video’s video catalog in 4K if you’re on the ad-supported version, and HDR is supported as well.

We’ve recently learned that Prime Video with ads has dropped support for both Dolby Vision HDR and object-based Dolby Atmos, two Dolby technologies that were previously supported in the standard Prime Video tier.

If you upgrade to the ad-free version of Prime Video, you’ll get Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos support back. (And in case you’re wondering, no, Amazon didn’t announce this change in advance.)

Yes, you can download Prime Videos for offline viewing even on the ad-supported tier.

Amazon is adding commercials to Prime Video for the same reason all the big streamers are: It wants more revenue.

Wall Street has been demanding profitability from the big streaming services, and offering cheaper, ad-supported tiers is an easy way to boost income. 

Indeed, Amazon is late to the “with ads” party. Max debuted HBO Max “With Ads” (back when it was still called “HBO Max”) more than two years ago. Netflix finally went the ad-supported way in late 2022, while Disney+ teed up its own ad-supported tier shortly afterward. 

That leaves Apple TV+ as the only big streamer without an ad-supported tier, but many expect Apple to roll out a cheaper Apple TV+ “with ads” plan sooner or later.