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Amazon Prime Streaming Ads Coming, Charging Advertisers Millions

By Nick Younker
Published on: 12:19 PST, Jun 22, 2017

Amazon Prime has been touted as the second-biggest subscription streaming service behind Netflix in the United States. But new deals for original content on Amazon Prime has forced the streaming service to start running commercials during its high-profile programming, which is coming this fall.

In a new deal with the NFL, Amazon has acquired the rights to stream Thursday Night Football games this fall and winter. That deal, which takes the streaming rights away from Twitter, is worth $50 million, according to a Reuters report via the New York Times. That is also five times the amount that Twitter paid to get the streaming rights for the football games, which was only $10 million.

Now that Amazon Prime will be streaming the Thursday Night Football games, they are searching for ways to recoup their investment and that is coming in the form of commercials to customers of Amazon Prime. But streaming fans have seen this before from streaming media company Hulu, who only recently started offering higher-priced subscriptions in lieu of seeing commercials for their customers. It appears as though Netflix is the only big streaming giant that is still holding out with running ads during their content, and that seems to have served them well considering they are the biggest subscription streaming company in the world.

Advertisers who seek to buy commercial time on Amazon Prime during their Thursday Night Football streams will have to cough up some major bucks as well. Amazon Prime has been cleared to sell up to 10 30-second commercial spots during each live streaming broadcast.

The reported costs for advertising on Amazon Prime during Thursday Night Football is around $2.8 million for the current packages being offered.

It should be noted that the live-streamed Thursday Night Football games will only be available to subscribers of Amazon Prime. So if you want to catch the games, you will have to succumb to the $99 annual subscription for the service.

Amazon seems to be making moves in many profitable markets as of late. Just recently, the online retail and streaming media giant announced a buyout of Whole Foods Market Inc. for a reported $13.7 billion. But it is unclear at this time if the ads are only going to support the costly Thursday Night Football streaming rights or if they are needed to support the Whole Foods price tag as well.

[Featured Image by Brian Ach/Getty Images for Amazon]

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