Amazon Prime Video has ads now. Here’s how to stop them

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

Amazon announced last September that ads would be coming to Prime Video, but it waited until December 2023 to reveal the exact date when ads would arrive. 

Prime Video with ads is included in Amazon Prime, which costs $14.99 a month or $139 a year.  

Besides Prime Video with ads, Amazon Prime offers such benefits 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 subscribers are now paying the same amount for Prime Video with ads as they previously did for ad-free Prime Video.

Want to go back to an ad-free Prime Video experience? 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 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 came 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. 

Prime Video with ads launched in January 2024 in the U.S., U.K., Germany, and Canada; France, Italy, Spain, Mexico, and Austria followed a few months later. 

While Prime Video with ads is available in most of the U.S., there are a few U.S. territories where it hasn’t gone live yet, including Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, the Mariana Islands, and American Samoa. 

Amazon has said that there will be about two to 3.5 minutes of ads on Prime Video per hour, but that figure is subject to change.

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.

Earlier this year, it came to light 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.

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

Amazon added commercials to Prime Video for the same reason most of the other big streamers did: 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.