Earlier this year, Amazon’s Prime Video shook up the advertising world.

The streaming giant flipped a metaphorical switch and turned on ads for all its Prime Video users. Prime subs could pay a few extra dollars per month to avoid ads, but in all likelihood few have done so.

The move immediately made Prime the largest ad-supported subscription streaming service in the world, and took full advantage of the move, raking in more than $1.8 billion in upfront fees this year, according to The Information.

Now Amazon is in a prime position (pun intended) to continue that growth into 2025 as a number of strategic moves appear to be converging.

For starters, Prime Video is expected to add more inventory to the service, although the exact nature of what that will look like remains unclear. It could mean more advertising spaces, or it could mean more types of marketing opportunities, as formats like the intermission break and various forms of sponsorship continue to proliferate.

An Amazon advertising executive, Kelly Day, told the newspaper FT that Prime Video’s ad load will “increase a bit” in 2025, although the company is expected to keep its overall ad load quite light.

An Amazon spokesperson said this The Hollywood Reporter that “we have not changed our plans to have significantly less advertising than linear TV and other streaming TV providers and have been evaluating advertising volumes to ensure we deliver a great customer experience.”

Either way, any move by Amazon to expand its advertising business is sure to give the competition heartburn as viewers flock to shows like Fallout and sports like the NFL.

When the company launched ads on Prime Video earlier this year, the streaming video ad market was flooded with inventory, and two top executives from ad vendors with competing streaming services say they felt the pain and missed internal targets even as their streaming revenues advertisements increased. healthy compared to the year before.

A repeat in 2025 could pose similar problems.

That’s especially true given Prime Video’s strength not only in reach, but also in live sports. Thursday Night football has an average of almost 15 million viewers per game, according to Nielsen, 25 percent more than last year.

Any questions about Prime Video’s ability to attract a large audience are settled with these numbers. Amazon says more than 50 new brands have signed on as sponsors TNF this season, Verizon, Subway, State Farm, AllState and JCPenney return as sponsors of pre- and post-game coverage, halftime and other programming.

The company also introduced shoppable and interactive ads in games, expanding its strategic priorities and leveraging Amazon’s retail power.

“Live sports content continues to scale and at Amazon we are creating meaningful opportunities for brands by combining customer reach with our first party insights and innovative ad technology,” said Danielle Carney, head of live sports and video sales for Amazon Ads, in connection with the TNF kick-off. “We offer full funnel capabilities that work for all advertisers, not just brands selling on Amazon.”

And next year, Prime Video will add the NBA, a dramatic expansion of its sports content, and a place to offer a slew of advertising opportunities for sponsors looking for a bigger piece of the sports pie.

It’s fair to say that advertising has become a big business for Amazon as a whole. In the second quarter, the company reported $12.7 billion in advertising revenue, up 20 percent from a year earlier.

The bulk of that will still come from retail, but Prime Video is expected to be a growth driver, with sports, new entertainment programming, new ad formats and perhaps that increased ad load all acting as catalysts in the coming year.