Amazon’s Prime Video is the latest streaming platform to announce an ad-supported offering.

Its new ad tier will become Prime Video’s default offering for members, rolling out in Canada (along with the U.S., U.K., and Germany) in early 2024, with other countries to follow soon after.

“We aim to have meaningfully fewer ads than linear TV and other streaming TV providers,” Amazon said in a statement on Friday (Sept. 22). The company is “not making changes in 2024 to the current price of Prime membership,” and no actions are required, with subscribers starting to see ads when the new default Prime tier is launched.

That said, there will be an ad-free option available for members (except for live event content such as sports, which will continue to include advertising), running an extra US$2.99 per month for U.S. Prime members on top of their membership fee, with pricing for Canada to be announced at a later date.

“We will email Prime members several weeks before ads are introduced into Prime Video with information on how to sign up for the ad-free option if they would like,” according to the statement.

Netflix has had an ad-supported offering for almost a year, Crave’s two ad-tiers have been live since July, and Disney+ announced its ad tier in August.

This story originally appeared in Media in Canada

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