Amazon Adding Commercials to Prime Video Next Month

Prime Video has long been one of the perks of paying for Amazon Prime. In addition to free shipping on your purchases, and a bunch of other bonuses, you pay for Prime, you get access to Prime Video, with tons of exclusive films (like Candy Cane Lane and Coming 2 America and even the occasional movie that does not star Eddie Murphy) and shows (like The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power and The Boys). And one of the best perks of Prime Video was the fact that the shows had no commercials, so you could get way deep into a binge of Bosch without ever having to watch an ad for shaving cream or questionable dietary supplements, or anything else.

Unfortunately, those halcyon days of ad-free Prime Video are now coming to an end — at least for those who pay for the standard Amazon Prime subscription. Amazon sent an email to subscribers today which read in part...

We are writing to you today about an upcoming change to your Prime Video experience. Starting January 29, Prime Video movies and TV shows will include limited advertisements. This will allow us to continue investing in compelling content and keep increasing that investment over a long period of time. We aim to have meaningfully fewer ads than linear TV and other streaming TV providers. No action is required from you, and there is no change to the current price of your Prime membership.

The standard Prime subscription currently costs $139 a year.

READ MORE: Prime Video Is Making a Mr. and Mrs. Smith TV Show

According to Amazon, there is a way to go ad-free, and you can probably guess what it is: You pay more money. The new “ad-free option” costs “an additional $2.99 per month.” Is it worth $36 a year to be able to watch a season of Reacher without commercial interruption? I guess that’s for you to decide. But you’ll have to do so by January 29, because that’s when this new system goes into effect.

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