Streaming was originally sold to us as an ad-free escape from traditional cable: You pay a company like Netflix a certain amount per month, and you get to watch their content without interruption.
Now, of course, it’s all different. Ad-free streaming is getting pretty expensive, and the prices are only continuing to rise. On top of that, companies are cracking down on password sharing, signaling that if you want to stream on their platforms, you need to pay for your own subscription.
That brings us back to ads. In an age when you can’t log into your parent’s Netflix anymore, and a traditional account costs way too much, you can turn to a much cheaper ad-supported plan instead. Many services already offer such a plan, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing. If you remember life before streaming, when content was constantly broken up by commercials, then you might not mind subscribing to an ad-supported plan, especially when it means saving quite a bit along the way.
Amazon is rolling out ads next year, but they’re here already
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While services like Max, Netflix, and Hulu have ad-supported plans already, others are on the way. Amazon is taking a slightly different approach, however: The company plans to introduce ads to its platform early next year, but as the default for all Prime Video users. If you want to watch without ads, you’ll need to spend an additional $2.99 a month on a service that has been free with all Prime memberships for years.
You don’t need to wait until 2024 to see this approach in action, either. In fact, you may have already fired up a movie or show on Prime Video only to have your ad-free content interrupted by ads. As it turns out, there’s a reason for that, and it’s not Amazon testing its ad-supported platform early.
Freevee is on Prime Video
If you’re seeing ads on Prime Video content in 2023, it’s because you’re actually watching Freevee content. Freevee (previously IMDB TV) is an ad-supported streaming service owned by Amazon. It has a ton of movies and TV series to stream, some you may have heard of and many you may not have. It even produces original content, such as the viral Jury Duty that aired earlier this year.
Freevee has its own app you can download on your devices, if you’re solely interested in watching its content. But if you subscribe to Prime Video, you can access the entire Freevee library from Amazon’s flagship platform. It’s an added convenience, sure, but it also leads to some confusion when that “Prime Video” title you pulled up suddenly has ad breaks.
You can tell when you’re about to stream a Freevee title, because Prime Video will attach an “ads: Free with ads on Freevee” tag to the title, as well as a “Watch free with ads” message next to the play button. But you might not notice it if you’re looking for something to watch in a hurry, or if you ask Alexa to start playing a particular title from Prime Video.
If you’re dead set on not seeing ads while watching your content, you’ll just need to be a bit scrupulous when picking something to watch on Prime Video. It might look like Amazon is the platform to watch the movie, but in actuality, it’s a Freevee show or movie. If that’s the case, you’ll need to look elsewhere to stream it uninterrupted.
However, if you don’t mind ads, the collaboration opens up a large library of titles for you to pick from. It also gives you an idea of what streaming Prime Video “for free” will look like in 2024. If you can’t stand the ads, you’ll need to be prepared to hand Amazon an additional $2.99 per month.