Prime Video Ads Are Coming On January 29, Amazon Announces To Subscribers

deadline.com:

Amazon announced in September that ads were on the way for Prime Video‘s entertainment content. Now we have a date. On January 29, commercials will be introduced to series and movies airing on the service in the U.S., UK, Germany and Canada.

That will be followed by France, Italy, Spain, Mexico, and Australia later in the year. The move was announced in a letter sent to subscribers that described the addition of what was termed “limited advertisements” to allow the service “to continue investing in compelling content and keep increasing that investment over a long period of time.” Among the caveats: Once frowned upon by streamers, a dual subscription-ad model — and the dual revenue stream that comes with it — has become the norm.

With Amazon Prime adopting ads across its entire content portfolio on the heels of Netflix and Disney+ introducing ad tiers, Apple TV+ remains the only major streaming platform to employ a pure subscription model.

This marks the next step in Amazon’s advertising ambitions. The company has spent the past several years mounting a major ad offensive, through both live sports as well as ad-supported sibling Prime Video platforms such as Freevee and Twitch.