— (Reuters)As the industry struggles with a slowdown in subscriber growth since the epidemic, Amazon Prime Video will join streaming competitors by launching commercials and a more expensive ad-free tier in 2019.
The American internet giant said on Friday that starting in early 2024, adverts would be available in the US, the UK, Germany, Canada, and Australia. France, Italy, Spain, Mexico, and Australia will follow later that year.
In the United States, where a Prime membership presently costs $14.99 per month, or $139 annually, Amazon’s ad-free tier will cost an additional $2.99 per month. The business said that pricing for additional nations would be disclosed later.
In an effort to offset the decrease in subscriber growth, companies like Netflix and Walt Disney have used similar strategies.
The ad-supported plans’ growth, on the other hand, has been moderate. Disney has hiked pricing for its ad-free tiers, while Netflix has eliminated its basic commercial-free plan in the United States and the United Kingdom to increase subscriptions for the tier.
Even if a subscriber has paid for the ad-free plan, Amazon already runs advertisements on live event material like the NFL’s Thursday Night Football, the firm claimed.
The firm said that it will not increase costs for the existing Prime membership level in 2024 and that it intended to have less advertisements than conventional TV and other streaming providers.
The online retailer doesn’t break down the number of Prime subscribers. However, according to Insider Intelligence, with 157.3 million users, Amazon Prime is the third-largest video-streaming service in the United States, behind only YouTube and Netflix.
Amazon posted better-than-expected quarterly sales growth and profit in August after two underwhelming earnings reports, thanks to improvements in both of its key growth engines, e-commerce and cloud computing.