Amazon expanding ads on Prime Video in five new markets in 2025

Amazon Prime Video will start showing advertising in five new markets starting in 2025.

Ads will begin playing for users in India, Japan, Brazil, the Netherlands and New Zealand. The news of the launch in new areas was announced at the Amazon UnBoxed conference.

In 2024, Amazon Prime Video began showing limited advertising to users in the U.S., Canada, Austria, Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Spain and the U.K. 

Prime Video is a perk of the ecommerce giant’s Prime membership program that is priced at $14.99 a year. The company had been allowing users to watch content ad-free prior to 2024.

Users can pay Amazon an additional $2.99 a month to remove ads from most content. Live sports and event broadcasts, as well as select other programming, may still show advertising. Consumers can also pay a separate fee to subscribe only to 

Amazon says that users in the new batch of countries that will be forced to start watching ads will have a similar option to opt-out, though it did not reveal pricing.

Meanwhile, Amazon has also indicated that, with $1.8 billion in ad commitments, users can likely expect to start seeing slightly more ads come 2025.

Amazon’s Prime Video is a bit unique in that it’s included as part of a separate subscription program, Prime, “at no extra cost.” It’s also available as a standalone subscription that doesn’t come with the shipping and other perks Prime includes.

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This puts it in a slightly different category as a true free, ad-supported streaming television service, despite the fact it is now ad-supported in at least some regions and technically is “free” (or, at least, doesn’t cost more) to Prime users.

Amazon also operates FreeVee, a true FAST. This service remains unchanged by the recent advertising updates, though it’s not clear if viewers can expect to see a higher ad load there thanks to Amazon’s looking up more ad buys in 2025.