Nope, there’s nothing wrong with your TV—that was an ad you just saw on Amazon Prime Video.
Like many of the big streaming services, Amazon Prime Video has rolled out an ad-supported tier, but it did so a little differently. Rather than raising prices and then giving you the chance to switch to a new, cheaper, “with ads” tier, Amazon added commercials to its standard tier, and you must pay more to turn the ads off.
So, want to get rid of the commercials? Here’s what you do, along with how much it’ll cost you.
How to turn off the ads on Amazon Prime Video
To nix the commercial breaks on Amazon Prime Video (well, most of them anyway–more on that in a bit), you’ll need to upgrade your existing Amazon Prime account.
Here’s how:
- Go to the Amazon Prime Video website, click your profile icon in the top-right corner of the page, then click Account & Settings.
- Click the Go Ad-Free button.
- Confirm your payment and billing info, then click Start subscription.
How much ad-free Amazon Prime Video costs
If you want to go back to an ad-free Prime Video experience, it’ll cost you an extra $2.99 a month, in addition to the cost of Prime.
As you probably know already, Prime Video is included in Amazon Prime, which costs $14.99 a month or $139 a year.
Besides Prime Video, Amazon Prime offers such benefits as free shipping for products purchased on Amazon, free Amazon Fresh grocery deliveries, Amazon Music, unlimited Amazon Photo storage, Prime Gaming, Prime Reading, and more.
Ad-free Amazon Prime still has some ads
Even before Amazon began rolling out ad breaks to the standard Prime Video tier, some Prime Video content already came with ads, namely Thursday Night Football and other live sporting events.
It’s worth noting that if you pony up for the ad-free version of Prime Video, you’ll still see commercial breaks during TNF and live sports.
What you keep–and lose–if you don’t upgrade to ad-free Prime Video
Besides the ads, standard Prime Video subscribers lose a couple of key benefits included in the ad-free Prime Video tier.
Namely, you’ll miss out on Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos, meaning you’ll have to make do without frame-by-frame HDR mapping as well as immersive 3D audio.
That said, all Prime Video subscribers get 4K and standard HDR10 streaming, along with the ability to download videos for offline viewing.
Didn’t Prime Video used to be ad-free for everyone?
Yep, that’s true. Previous to January 29, 2024, Prime Video content was almost completely ad-free (there were exceptions, which we’ll detail in a moment). As of now, however, the standard Amazon Prime Video plan comes with ads.
Looked at another way, current Amazon Prime subscribers are now paying the same amount for Prime Video with ads as they previously did for ad-free Prime Video.
For the record, Amazon first announced in September 2023 that ads would be coming to Prime Video.
Purchased and rented Prime Video titles stay ad-free
Even if you don’t upgrade your Prime Video plan, any movies or TV shows that you purchase or rent on Prime Video will be ad-free.
Why ads came to Prime Video
Amazon added commercials to Prime Video for the same reason most of the other big streamers did: It wants more revenue.
Wall Street has been demanding profitability from the big streaming services, and offering cheaper, ad-supported tiers is an easy way to boost income.
Indeed, Amazon is late to the “with ads” party. Max debuted HBO Max “With Ads” (back when it was still called “HBO Max”) more than three years ago. Netflix finally went the ad-supported way in late 2022, while Disney+ teed up its own ad-supported tier shortly afterward.
That leaves Apple TV+ as the only big streamer without an ad-supported tier, but many expect Apple to roll out a cheaper Apple TV+ “with ads” plan sooner or later.