Amazon reportedly preparing to retire ad-supported Freevee service (NASDAQ:AMZN)

Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) is getting ready to retire its free ad-supported TV offering Freevee, Adweek reports.

Freevee — formerly IMDB TV — has been Amazon’s toehold in the free ad-supported television (FAST) space, where visitors can view on-demand library programming with ad breaks inserted. That’s now a common destination for programming that isn’t available on major subscription services.

But now that Amazon has brought advertising to its default Prime Video offering, Freevee represents some redundancy, particularly given that some titles are both on Freevee and Prime Video (the difference before being that Prime Video was ad-free).

The change may be more on the branding side, Adweek notes, as Amazon could decide to move Freevee’s programs to a three-tiered approach: A free ad-supported version of Prime Video, the default ad-supported subscription available to Amazon Prime members, and the ad-free Prime Video that now costs a monthly premium over and above the Prime price.

Amazon told Variety that Adweek’s report is inaccurate: “There are no changes to Freevee. Amazon Freevee remains an important streaming offering providing both Prime and non-Prime customers thousands of hit movies, shows, and originals, all for free.”