TL;DR
- Amazon Prime Video to stream ads between Indian series & movies.
- Roll-out will begin in 2025.
- An ad-free plan will also be announced
Leading OTT Platform Amazon Prime Video has been rolling out ad-supported plans in various countries around the world for the last few months. Now, it seems ads are coming to India as well and the OTT giant has confirmed that Indian viewers will have to watch ads between series and movies from 2025. The ad-riddled scheme has worked well for platforms like Disney+Hotstar and Netflix so it was almost confirmed that Prime Video will also adopt this strategy by introducing the ad-free tier along with regular Prime Membership plans.
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What does Prime Video with Ads mean for users?
The Amazon Prime Users will start seeing more ads between streaming sessions of movies and web series. The exact date of these changes isn’t announced yet but the rollout will happen in 2025 has been confirmed. The platform also claims that it will inform the subscribers about the changes via email before the rollout takes place.
For those who don’t want to see ads between their viewing sessions, Amazon will also launch an ad-free plan that will cost more. The details of this plan will be revealed later.
Streaming platforms started as ad-free watching sites but as years have gone by, they started facing losses, and thus to monetize the content, plans with ads started rolling out. This move is a 360-degree turnaround from the original claims of these platforms and thus these changes are very less appealing to the users. Some platforms have even imposed restrictions on password sharing which forces more and more people to buy their own subscriptions.
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How much do these plans cost for consumers?
When assessing the total expenditure on streaming services, it becomes evident that the costs often exceed those associated with traditional cable TV subscriptions. This raises the question of whether cable television or DTH services might experience a resurgence in popularity in the coming years, particularly if the prices of OTT platforms continue to rise. While the future remains uncertain, there is some positive news for Prime Video users in India: Amazon has announced that it has no intention of increasing the prices of its current membership plans in the country. Additionally, this decision will not impact Prime Lite subscribers, who can enjoy the full content library of the platform on a single device in 720p HD with advertisements.
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What does Amazon Prime say about the ad-ridden plan?
“We aim to have meaningfully fewer ads than linear television (TV) and other streaming TV providers. We will also offer a new ad-free option and will share the price of that option 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.”
This development has come just before another major merger is about to materialize wherein Amazon will merge two ad-supported streaming services Amazon Mini TV & MX Player. This is a part of the strategy by Amazon to boost its digital advertising revenue in the country.
For now, we are curious to see how Prime Video goes ahead with its ad-supported rollout and how much will the ad-free plan cost in India. Also, Netflix which has already announced ad-supported plans in other countries might bring them to India too, following the rival Prime Video’s move to do so.
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