It’s official: Amazon is introducing a £2.99 monthly premium if you want to keep the Prime Video streaming service ad-free.
It was announced last year in the US that Amazon’s Prime Video service was going to slightly change in 2024. Now, that change is coming to the UK as well.
Since it launched, Prime Video has been an included benefit of the overall Amazon Prime service. You pay a monthly or annual fee, and get its streaming service alongside free shipping and other such malarkey.
However, the cost of running a streaming service has been increasing, at a time when audiences are being more careful with how much they spend on their subscriptions. As such, whilst Amazon isn’t doing what Apple, Netflix and Disney have done by outright raising prices, it’s come up with something a little more cunning.
From February 5th, Prime Video will continue to be included as part of the standard Amazon Prime package. However, it’ll now come with “limited advertisements”, which Amazon says will allow it “to continue investing in compelling content and keep increasing that investment over a long period of time”.
Users won’t have to do anything, and the ads will just organically start to appear next month.
However, if you’d prefer to not have your film or TV show interrupted by advertising, Amazon is also introducing the option to pay a little extra to switch them off. For a monthly fee of £2.99, you can remove adverts from the Prime Video streaming service altogether, and continue pretty much as you were.
The ad-free option is available to pre-order on the Amazon UK service now, although it doesn’t kick in until the start of February. We wait and see if the £2.99 price point will remain a constant, or if that turns out to be a level Amazon can pull in the future when it needs a few more quid.
Amazon Prime members are being emailed about the changes this very week. You can find the Amazon website here.
