Amazon Prime Video will serve more ads in 2025

Subscribers to Amazon Prime’s ad-supported tier will be seeing more ads next year according to Amazon’s VP of Prime Video International, Kelly Day.

According to The Financial Times, Day said that Prime’s ad tier “load” would “ramp up a bit more into 2025.” She described the current ad load as “very light” as the ads are currently before and after a show, rather than in the middle of it.

Day described this as “a gentle entry into advertising that has exceeded customers’ expectations in terms of what the ad experience would be like”.

When Amazon launched the ad-supported tier of Prime Video earlier this year, they automatically moved all customers onto it and introduced a higher-paid option that removed the ads. This drew criticism from rivals Netflix, who added a cheaper tier with ads when they introduced them to their streaming platform.

Day said: “We know it was a bit of a contrarian approach to take to things from us. But . . . it’s actually gone much better than we even anticipated.”

She also confirmed that customer churn from the introduction of ads has been “much, much less than we anticipated . . . we haven’t really seen a groundswell of people churning out or canceling”.

In an attempt to attract more advertisers to fill the newly created ad space, Amazon shared data this week that suggests they can reach 19 million British viewers monthly – this amounts to nearly a third of the population. They also boasted a global reach of 200 million people.

They are also using their unique positioning as an online e-commerce business to attract advertisers. The introduction of new interactive and “shoppable” ads will allow users to add items to their Amazon Prime carts directly from ads on Prime Video.

Interactive pause ads will also be introduced, displaying an advert whenever users pause their show from which users can find out more and add items to their cart.

An Amazon spokesperson said: “We have not changed our plans to have meaningfully fewer ads than linear TV and other streaming TV providers, and evaluate advertising volumes to help ensure we’re delivering a great customer experience.”

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