The age of free: Are we past the premium streaming era?

Earlier in October, two of India’s most popular ad-supported video streaming services, Amazon miniTV and MX Player, merged formally to create a unified platform—Amazon MX Player. With the acquisition of MX Player from Times Internet, Amazon is now positioning itself as India’s largest free streaming service, with a reach of around 250 million unique users. 

The union is aimed at boosting Amazon’s digital ad revenues, riding on MX Player’s expansive reach and miniTV’s existing brand tie-ups with companies such as Nissan, Hero MotoCorp, Mamaearth, Realme, and others. Together, both parties are looking to define the “future of free entertainment” in India, they said in a statement.

A few weeks later at Amazon’s ‘unBoxed 2024’ event in Austin, Texas, the company announced that starting in 2025, it would be introducing “limited advertisements” on its Prime Video service in India (as well as in Brazil, Japan, New Zealand, and The Netherlands). This comes almost a year after Prime Video rolled out its ad-tier in the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, and select European markets in a bid to boost revenue growth as subscriptions stagnated globally. 

Alternate income streams have become imperative for all streaming platforms, including Amazon, if they are to continue making big-ticket investments in content. Incidentally, Prime Video’s global rivals, Netflix and Disney+, launched ads back in 2022 and have gone on to reap positive outcomes. 

In India, though, Netflix is yet to debut its ad-supported plan, while Disney+ Hotstar has had freemium offerings since inception. With the launch of ads, Amazon looks to “reimagine the streaming TV experience” for OTT audiences, with interactive ad formats that can seamlessly blend into the premium content that Prime Video has to offer.