Prime Innovations in Streaming Land
How Prime Video’s latest additions reflect the larger streaming market, and the one competitive advantage it has over all other streaming services.
As expected, the U.S. presidential election and its aftermath dominated the news cycle this week, bringing forth a tsunami of hot takes and think pieces on what its outcome means for the coming years. For the impact on the tech industry, the New York Times has a good high-level overview that is well worth a read. For this article, however, we’ll take a look at a slew of new features and announcements coming out of Amazon’s Prime Video that have been flying a bit under the radar in the weeks leading up to the contested election, but are quite representative of where the OTT streaming space in its current, post-streaming-wars landscape.
Going Live in Primetime
Let’s start with the increase of live programs on streaming services. As more cord-cutters ditch cable TV for streaming, — over 4 million people have reportedly canceled cable TV in 2024, — most sports leagues are eager to go where the audience is heading as well. While Venu Sports, the proposed sports streaming bundle by a joint venture between Disney, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery, get mired in legal issues, other streaming services have been steadily adding more live sports from major sports leagues for subscribers.
Case in point: last week, Amazon announced that it plans to build on its Black Friday NFL game, which it debuted last year to somewhat disappointing ratings, by adding an live NBA game afterwards. By trying out this unique one-two punch of live sports programs, Amazon is hoping to attract more sports fans to its platform and keep them watching for a longer time during a crucial day in the holiday shopping season. Any eyeball that Amazon can attract and retain on Black Friday by leveraging the immediacy of live sports content could translate into more sales for its main ecommerce site.
Prime Video has been steadily increasing its investment in live sports over the past few years, beginning in 2022 with exclusive Thursday Night Football games from the NFL. In July, Amazon emerged as a major rightsholder for NBA games alongside Disney and NBCUniversal. As part of the media pact, Amazon gets to stream 66 regular-season NBA games around the world, including an opening-week doubleheader. This new Black Friday game is presumably part of the pact as well.
Besides live sports content, Prime Video has been dipping its toe into other types of live programs as well. For the election night on Tuesday, it hosted an election night special with former NBC news anchor Brian Williams. Although the free-to-watch special drew mixed reactions for its seemingly low production budget and divisive on-air talent, it likely won’t be the last time that Amazon experimented with non-sports live programs.
Adapting More Video Games
After a decade of trials and errors on the big screen, video game adaptations are finding success on streaming services lately. Amazon had a huge win with its TV adaptation of Fallout on Prime Video earlier this year, and the company is going to continue mining video games for source material.
On Thursday, Variety reports that Amazon MGM Studios is developing a TV series based on the sci-fi universe from the popular video game franchise “Mass Effect,” which launched to rave reviews in 2007 and has spawned three more games in the main series since. In addition, Amazon is reportedly looking to revive its plan to make a live action series based on the “God of War,” s hugely popular ancient mythology-themed Playstation game, after the creative teams that wrote the script left the project. The company has also announced a new adult-animated anthology series coming to Prime Video in December, featuring original stories set within the worlds of popular video games, such as “PAC-MAN” and “Dungeons & Dragons.”
Of course, video game adaptations have been popular for a few years — HBO Max struck Emmy Gold with its The Last of Us adaptation last year, and Netflix has developed a slew of video game adaptations, mostly animated, in recent years. After Hollywood took some early stabs to translate hit video games to the big silver screen to uneven results — remember the 2016 Assassin’s Creed film starring Michael Fassbender? Me either. — it seems that video game adaptations have fully come alive as TV series on streaming platforms.
The growing popularity of video game adaptations shows that there’s a growing appetite for gaming-related content. The next logical step to drive growth would be for streaming services to figure out how to incorporate video games into their platforms. Not for the lack of trying, Netflix’s recent push into gaming has yet to pay off. In response, it seems that the company is switching things up, having recently shuttered pne of its in-house game studios and shifted its focus from making console-quality video games to casual mobile games. It has even gone so far as to remove most of its interactive content titles. The fact that Amazon also owns Twitch, the leading video game live streaming service, holds enormous potential to offer unique experiences for gaming fans, such as real-time viewing parties, or interactive watch-alongs with popular Twitch personalities. If streaming platforms can find ways to effectively incorporate gaming experiences into their services, they could engage audiences in new ways that go beyond passive viewing.
Testing AI Use Cases
How to apply AI in a productive and ethical manner is emerging as a defining question of our times. Amazon, though lagging behind on upgrading its Alexa voice assistant, is eager to bring AI to Prime Video with “X-Ray Recaps,” a new feature that uses generative AI to provide quick summaries of TV shows. Powered by Amazon Bedrock and custom AI models on Amazon SageMaker, X-Ray Recaps generates detailed, minute-specific summaries by analyzing video segments, subtitles, and dialogue. Initially available on Amazon’s Fire TV devices in the U.S., Amazon plans to expand support to more devices by the end of the year.
The AI-generated recaps are also designed to be spoiler-free, as the AI will only summarize up to the point where a Prime Video viewer last watched a show. It builds on Prime Video’s existing X-Ray features, which offer trivia and details about cast, soundtrack, and production. Viewers can easily access these recaps from the Prime Video detail page or during playback. It remains to be seen how accurate these AI-generated recaps will be.
While the functionality of X-Ray Recaps may streamline the viewing experience, its introduction raises broader questions about AI’s role in content creation and personalization. Viewers may expect AI to understand not just the facts about plots and characters, but the emotional and thematic elements that underscore the story. How successfully a streamer achieves this balance will determine how audiences respond to emerging AI-driven features, potentially paving the way for more AI integrations in streaming. The best AI use cases, of course, are the ones that don’t appear to be using AI at all.
Selling the Prime Lifestyle
The ultimate competitive advantage for Prime Video is that it is part of the Amazon Prime membership program that offers a wide range of perks for subscribers far beyond streaming. For example, in partnership with Fandango, Amazon Prime members will have the exclusive opportunity to get early access to see the upcoming Wicked film. This collaboration underscores Amazon’s commitment to adding value for its subscribers by creating a first-look experience for popular films. In addition, Prime members can even save on the gas they need to drive to the cinema!
Of course, the biggest synergy for Amazon is still between its flagship ecommerce operation and Prime Video’s shoppable ads. Since Amazon has essentially turned on ads for all Prime Video subscribers (opting out would require a $3 per month surcharge) earlier this year, Amazon has significantly increased its addressable ad audience. And it has been working on bringing more interactive ad units to Prime Video that links back to Amazon product pages for one-click purchase.
Duracell, for instance, has incorporated Amazon’s interactive carousels in its Thursday Night Football ad spots, allowing viewers to explore products directly from their screen. According to Adweek, interactive Duracell ads have catalyzed a 2.5% lift in brand recall and a 1.8% lift in consideration. Amazon also noted that those spots drove an 86% increase in “add-to-cart” rate. By integrating clickable links within ads, Amazon is redefining in-app shopping and creating new avenues for brand engagement.
At the end of the day, Amazon is not just in the content business, and Prime Video has long been just a nice customer acquisition lead for its core ecommerce business. Moreover, one could argue that Amazon is really in the business of selling the Amazon Prime lifestyle — a seamless, comfortable world where everything you need — from groceries and gadgets to entertainment — is just a click away.
