Starting in 2024, starting February 5 this year in Germany, Amazon’s Prime Video has also shown intermittent advertising as part of the basic subscription. The long-term strategy behind this is to expand the number of advertising spaces. This has now been confirmed by the head of the service, Kelly Day, to the Financial Times. Day only moved from ViacomCBS to Amazon in late 2021. CBS, one of the major “networks” in the United States, has been offering extensive streaming there for ten years, from which, among other things, “Paramount+”, which is also available in Germany, emerged.
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More ad space in 2025
As Day told the newspaper on the sidelines of an advertising industry conference in London, Prime Video increasingly wants to persuade big brands to work together. Until now in Germany, there have usually been spots for Prime content or other Amazon offers during breaks in advertising subscriptions, which in the industry usually means that ad spots are not fully booked.
Campaigns from major brands that run in parallel on German television channels are often not shown on Prime Video. Still, like Kelly Day, the number of ad spots should be increased in 2025 Financial Times confirmed,
Details about how this will be implemented are not clear from the report. Using the example of the successful American series with a running time of about 40 minutes, it can be seen that Amazon still has many opportunities to increase the number of advertising blocks or their duration.
In terms of theatrical design in Germany such formats typically have at least four slots for an advertising block, Prime Video currently uses only three with one to three spots per slot; A new advertising initiative could change that.
very few layoffs
Your company believes it can afford this because Prime Video’s approximately 200 million customers worldwide have not reacted to the subscription change as negatively as expected. Kelly Day said the number of layoffs was “much lower than we anticipated.”
Day did not want to say how many customers had opted for the more expensive ad-free subscription, but it was less than the 20 percent reported by industry observers.
This change is partly legally controversial.
Whether the change in membership was legal in all countries remains legally controversial. However, it has been clear for some time that Amazon is serious about its strategy of delivering ads to as many customers as possible. The company had already announced in May 2024 that there would be advertising even when playback was paused.
Among other things, interactive offers for direct purchases from a stream on Amazon are also being considered. With its dominance in online retail, Prime Video has an edge over competitors like Netflix and Disney+, which can also be sold well to advertisers in the form of multi-level marketing.
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