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One of the last streaming services to be exclusively ad-free has officially launched ads.

After an announcement late last year, all Prime Video accounts converted to an ad-supported plan yesterday, January 29, and like other ad-supported services, the only way to get rid of these ads is to pay an extra $2.99 monthly.

You probably have some questions, like how can I get rid of these? And are the ads really that annoying?

Luckily for you, we did some research (which included watching Prime Video and taking note of the ad length) and you can find out everything you need to know about new ads on Prime Video.

How To Get Rid of Ads on Prime Video:

As of yesterday, all Prime Video accounts now include ads, and any new subscriptions to Amazon Prime and Prime Video will also default to the ad-supported plan.

You can’t sign up for Prime Video initially without ads, so you’ll have to make that change once your account is already active.

There are a few steps to follow if you want to go ad-free, which costs an additional $2.99/month on top of the monthly Amazon Prime subscription price.

Go to Accounts and Settings and select Your Account
Select Go Ad-Free
Select Start Subscription

Those instructions are for upgrading your account on desktop or mobile, but it can also be easily done from the Prime Video app on streaming devices and smart TVs.

Prime Video is included with an Amazon Prime Membership ($15/month). Learn more here.

What Prime Video Content Will Have Ads?

All Prime Video titles, from Amazon Originals (like Saltburn, Reacher, and The Summer I Turned Pretty), to the rotating selection of outside films and series, are now going to have ads.

Previously, only titles under Amazon Freevee came with ads you weren’t able to skip, and Freevee will continue to be ad-supported even if you decide to upgrade your account to ad-free.

Other things that will still include ads, even with an ad-free upgrade, are live sports, live TV, and any Prime Video Channels add-ons that you’ve purchased if they’re an ad-supported plan (like Max).

This change won’t affect those who rent and buy movies and TV shows on-demand from Prime Video; the titles that you own are yours and you won’t have to watch ads before or during them.

How Many Ads Will Shows or Movies Have?

While the number of ads will likely fluctuate, here’s what we found as we watched some titles on Prime Video:

Hour-long TV episode (The Boys): One 15-second ad played before the episode began, and the progress bar did have one ad-stoppage marker about 15 minutes into the episode. That ad break was also just one 15-second ad.
Half-Hour TV episode (Fleabag): An ad didn’t play before the episode started, and there was only one ad break, also 15 minutes in. Again, the ad that played was 15 seconds. However, when the episode ended and the second auto-played, it did have 15 seconds of ads before starting (and the mid-episode ad-break as well, this one 13 minutes in).
Feature-length movie (Saltburn): Two ads (30 seconds total) played before the movie. The progress bar didn’t show any indication of more ads the way it did on the TV episodes, which means you’ll likely be able to watch movies uninterrupted with ad-supported Prime Video.

All in all, Prime Video is giving less ads on average than other services, which have 3-4 ad breaks on average during shows, and 1-2 full minutes of ads before movies.

For more like this, check out the Decider Shopping section.