Amazon reportedly to show more ads on Prime Video

Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) is preparing to roll out more ads across its hit television shows and movies on Prime Video next year, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday.

In an interview with the FT, Kelly Day, vice president of Prime Video, who oversees the streaming video business in global markets, said there would be an increasing number of ad slots for brands to target in 2025.

The report said Amazon claimed it had a global ad reach of about 200M—the average monthly potential viewers of ad-supported Prime Video—with more than half in the U.S.

Day told FT that Prime Video had deliberately launched earlier this year with a “very light ad load”—with no ad breaks in the middle of a program—which had been a “gentle entry into advertising that has exceeded customers expectations in terms of what the ad experience would be like.” The company automatically flipped its more than 200M total global subscribers to its ad-supported service, unless they actively chose to pay more for the premium ad-free service, the report said.

Day said: “We know it was a bit of a contrarian approach to take to things from us. But…it’s actually gone much better than we even anticipated.” She said that “churn”—when a customer leaves the Prime service—had also “been much, much less than we anticipated…we haven’t really seen a groundswell of people churning out or canceling.”.

Day declined to say how many customers had moved to pay more for their ad-free tier, but said it was below the figure estimated by some analysts of 20 percent.

Among other things, Day also confirmed plans for live news coverage of the U.S. election and said live sports, such as the National Football League’s Thursday Night Football, and events such as music would continue to be important. It will also unveil interactive and “shoppable” ad formats for Prime Video.