Amazon is developing a free, ad-supported version of Prime Video, according to source that spoke to AdAge. Right now, in order to access Prime Video, you have to be a Prime member and pay $99 to access a variety of video streaming content that is mostly ad-free. If you aren’t interested in paying to access Prime Video, this may be a good alternate option.
This ad-supported version will be made available to non-Prime members. This means that Amazon will have a platform for advertisers, potentially opening a new route for the company to make additional revenue and advertising stream for advertisers. AdAge says that Amazon may also share audience information and ad revenue in order to kick off the project.
An unnamed executive told AdAge that “Amazon is talking about giving content creators their own channels, and sharing ad revenue in exchange for a set number of hours of content each week.”
The streaming and ad-supported model has seen increasing attention in recent years. People are migrating away from traditional TV and going towards subscription-based models services like Netflix. This is due to the ad-free experience that everyone loves. With traditional TV, you get those ads basically every 7-10 minutes.
This ad-supported platform would definitely be popular and attractive to content creators and advertisers, but it’s a question as to how popular it will be for consumers. This “freemium” model is a hit or miss. There are several freemium models out there that currently do work, but will it work for Amazon? The company is making a bet in this model for movies and TV shows. Amazon is also setting this new model as a stage to where it can attract more subscribers to upgrade to Prime.
