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Prime Video’s ad tier is on the way, and Amazon is trying to make advertisers and viewers an offer they can’t refuse.
The company is offering lower ad prices than competitors at launch on Jan. 29, and projecting massive reach thanks to a plan that automatically enrolls consumers, according to several media buyers familiar with talks.
Prime Video is coming to market with CPMs (cost per thousand viewers reached) in the mid-to-low $30 range, which is in line with prices for its Thursday Night Football inventory, according to two buyers with knowledge of the offering. By contrast, Netflix originally asked for a $65 CPM when it debuted its ad tier in late 2022, and HBO Max currently charges between $33 and $53 CPMs for ads, according to Insider.
“It is far more competitive with some of the more established ad tiers and well below where some of the premium competition started at launch,” one buyer told Adweek, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
Of course, that more competitive pricing is largely due to Prime Video’s massive scale, with the company projecting a reach of more than 100 million subscribers at launch, according to two buyers. However, it’s unclear if the number means individual subscribers or household members who will see the ad.
Those numbers come from the ad tier automatically enrolling subscribers, with Prime subscribers required to pay an extra $2.99 for an ad-free experience. Prime service (including Prime Video) has over 200 million paying customers and costs $139 per year.
Prime Video had no additional comment to add besides directing to an Amazon blog that noted how the ad tier will “help brands connect with audiences.”
The company’s ad-tier projections tower over many other notable ad-tier newcomers.
Roughly one year into their ad tiers, Netflix has 15 million global monthly active users on its ads plan as of Nov. 2023, and Disney has 5.2 million subscribers for its ad tier as of Sept. 30, 2023. Neither company automatically enrolled ad tier users at launch.
“It’s much more interesting than Netflix,” a second buyer said of Amazon’s offer.
