Amazon Video Direct – The New Entrant in the User-Generated Video Market
Amazon unveiled its own plans to compete in the user-generated video market with the launch of a new service named as Amazon Video Direct. It allows anyone to upload their own video content, whether it’s feature films, shorts, web series, or music videos, and lets them decide whether or not to make viewing that content free.
In return, it generates royalties based on the hours streamed which allows anyone to upload and get paid per hour streamed.
How can One Use It?
Amazon Video Direct gives users four options on how to earn royalties from their work:
- Content providers can allow viewers to buy or rent their work and receive 50% of net revenue.
- If they include their videos in Amazon video Prime they can earn $0.15 for every hour their content is streamed.
- Users can make their content free with ads and receive 55% of net advertising revenue.
- To earn more money providers can make their content available only to those with add-on subscriptions and receive 50% of net monthly revenue.
With such a platform, new video creators get exposure to the site’s millions of online shoppers and has the flexibility of picking among several different paths for making money.
The company has also provided a self-service option for video providers to get their content into a premium streaming subscription service.
To subscribe one has to pay just $8.99 as a standalone service that Amazon has created for a video-only tier of Prime membership that competes directly with Netflix. They are available through the Streaming Partners Program and are intended for larger-scale video providers.
How Does Amazon Video Direct Work?
All Amazon Video direct videos can be played back anywhere from mobile phones and tablets connected via TV platforms, and Fire TV.
Creators get an access to metrics to see how their videos are performing. The system has the ability to track the number of minutes a title was streamed, projected revenue, payment history, and a number of subscribers. With the help of these stats, creators get an idea to make changes based on their metrics system.
Above all this for the first time, there’s a self-service option for video providers to get their content into a premium streaming subscription service. Such type of exposure has its own advantages as it gets quite simple for content creators to find an audience, and for their audience to find great content.
How Does It Differ From YouTube and Others?
Video Direct is a set of infrastructure whereby people who make videos can upload them to Amazon’s video service. In many ways the videos are available to customers:
- All the videos can be free to anyone and feature ads that will be sold by Amazon in exchange for a 45 percent cut.
- They are also available for digital purchase or rental, in which case Amazon will keep 50 percent of the money.
Amazon’s real target is offered by Direct marketing material which emphasizes the idea of watching Amazon video on any television rather than watching casually on a web browser.
Nowadays many people use this platform for Netflix-like service to watch Amazon’s free TV shows and movies. But Amazon is targeting larger video creators and MCNs as opposed to the everyday, mainstream users who use YouTube to upload personal videos.
The Verdict
Thus, Amazon Video Direct is open to any video creator, and this e-commerce giant will compete head-to-head with Google’s YouTube as well as other big Internet video distributors like Facebook and Vimeo.
Let’s hope that it creates the unique distribution strategies that reflect the changing ways in which our audiences discover our films.
Dhruvil is a Writer & Marketeer for Nimblechapps, joined in December 2014, based out of Sydney, Australia. He has worked briefly as a Branding and Digital Marketing Manager before moving to Australia. At Nimblechapps, he worked on Social Media Marketing, Branding, Email Marketing and Blogging. Dhruvil studies Business at University of Western Sydney, and also handles Operations for the company in Australia.