Amazon Prime Video to add more ads

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Amazon Prime Video is going to start showing even more ads.

Earlier this year, Amazon started showing marketing on Prime Video. They were given a one-month warning about the introducing of the new advertising, which led to frustration among users, who were asked to pay an additional £2.99 if they did not want to see it.

Now, Amazon says that customers had responded positively to those ads and that it would increase the amount that is shown to users.

Much fewer people than expected had left their accounts, according to Kelly Day, vice president of prime video. And less than 20 per cent of customers had opted to pay the extra charge to remove ads, she told the Financial Times.

Some of the new advertising will include new kinds of formats, she said. That might include “shoppable” formats that people can click on to buy things through Amazon, for instance.

The new marketing will also include “pause ads” that show while a show is stopped. Those were recently introduced by YouTube, which also said it had seen a positive response from viewers.

When Amazon first announced the introduction of ads, around a year ago, it specifically pointed to the limited amount of marketing that would be shown. “We aim to have meaningfully fewer ads than linear TV and other streaming TV providers,” it said in its statement then.

It also said that the money raised through the advertising would be used to fund more programming.

Amazon Prime Video is planning to offer more content including live formats such as sport and news coverage including the US election, Ms Day told the FT.

Amazon’s introduction of advertising came amid an increased interest in the change among streaming services. It shortly followed Netflix’s decision to do the same, for instance – and earlier this year, it said that its ad-supported tier, which offers a lower-priced subscription in return for seeing marketing, is continuing to grow.