Amazon has become the latest streaming service to unveil plans for adverts within its programmes – unless customers pay to remove them.

The internet giant has confirmed it intends to introduce ‘limited advertisements’ from next year.

The cost of a Prime membership is currently £8.99 a month – or £95 a year.

Customers with a subscription are offered a wide range of shopping, savings and entertainment benefits which include an array of movies, television shows, original documentaries and live sports to stream or download.

But Amazon says in order to continue investing in the service, from early next year Prime Video programmes and films will also include ‘commercials’.

The ads in Prime Video will be introduced in the US, UK, Germany and Canada in early 2024 followed by France, Italy, Spain, Mexico and Australia later the same year.

How much will ad-free cost?

Prime subscribers won’t need to do anything to switch to the new subscription arrangement, says Amazon, which also said it won’t make any changes in 2024 to the current price of membership.

However – a new ad-free subscription option will soon be available to customers which for an extra cost will remove the adverts from between Amazon shows.

In America, Amazon has confirmed the price of an ad-free subscription will be an extra $2.99 a month – the equivalent to around £2.40.

Price plans for other countries will be confirmed at a ‘later date’, says Amazon, but Prime members will receive an email before ads are introduced in order to offer them the ad-free option should they wish to upgrade.

Streaming services across the board are understood to be suffering from a reduction in subscriber numbers in the last 12 months amid increased competition and viewing options and as customers cut back their spending in the cost of living crisis.

In July, Netflix announced it was scrapping its basic ad-free plan for new customers.

The £7 basic package used by millions of viewers will remain open to current customers – until they either change their plan or cancel their account.

It means new customers wanting to join Netflix now have to choose between Netflix’s cheaper £4.99 standard plan - with ads that will play commercials five times during every hour of viewing - or the more expensive £10.99 standard account that comes without adverts and allows for two simultaneous streams.