After having introduced ads into its Prime Video offering in Australia in July, Amazon is now set to increase the number of advertisements shown on its platform.

When announcing that it was starting to roll out ads onto its platform in Oz in July, the company said that viewers could expect ads to be less frequent than on its competitors’ platforms. “We aim to have meaningfully fewer ads than linear TV and other streaming TV providers,” Amazon Prime said in an email to customers earlier this year.

That guarantee does not seem to hold any longer.

Kelly Day, vice-president of Prime Video International, who oversees the streaming video business in global markets, said there would be an increasing number of ad slots for brands to target in 2025, reported the Financial Times.

The company said it had not seen a sharp drop in subscribers since it introduced advertising to its Prime Video platform. Day said its advertising “load” would “ramp up a little bit more into 2025”.

Amazon prime video

Amazon’s rival platforms including Netflix, Paramount+ and Disney+, and Max too which is confirmed to launch in Australia next year have an ad-supported tier at a lower price than subscriptions that carry no ads.

In Australia, Amazon Prime Video’s ad-supported tier costs A$9.99 per month, while its ad-free tier is priced at A$12.99 per month.

Overall, Amazon says that it has a global ad reach of about 200 million — the average monthly potential viewers of ad-supported Prime Video — with more than half in the US.

Day said that Prime Video had deliberately launched earlier this year with a “very light ad load” which had been a “gentle entry into advertising that has exceeded customers’ expectations in terms of what the ad experience would be like”.

Amazon then automatically moved its more than 200 million total global subscribers to its ad-supported service, unless they actively chose to pay more for the premium ad-free service

Day said that “churn” — when a customer leaves the Prime service — had also “been much, much less than we anticipated…we haven’t really seen a groundswell of people churning out or cancelling”.

She did not indicate how many customers chose to pay more and move to the ad-free tier, but stated it was below analyst estimates of 20 per cent. Revenues from its digital advertising business rose a fifth to $12.8 billion (A$18.63 billion) during the second quarter of 2024 compared with the year before.

Amazon has said that it will also unveil interactive and “shoppable” ad formats for Prime Video. Viewers will be able to add an item to their cart, or learn more about a brand, by clicking their remote or scanning their mobile device, without having to leave shows on the streaming service.

Amazon, unlike its rivals, has the ability to convert advertising to sales due to its powerful e-commerce platform.

Amazon is now believed to be focusing on live sports and even live news coverage for its Prime Video platform.