Amazon and Prime Instant Video – the marketing strategies behind Amazon’s subscription VOD
The battle for the best Video-on-Demand (VOD) between Netflix and Amazon continues. But since Amazon covers a diverse range of businesses, worldwide consumers are impressed with how Amazon Instant Video and Prime Instant Video are revolutionizing the viewers’ experience. Subscription VOD by Amazon continues to get larger audience in the US, Europe, Americas and even on Asia.
If you haven’t yet downloaded the Amazon Instant Video mobile app or subscribed to Amazon Prime, this piece of information would be your best guide. If you already did, then this would serve as your marketing guide. Let’s check what the Amazon video store has for us.
The Video Store – Rent vs. Buy, HD vs. SD
If you’re an aficionado of the Walking Dead series, you can buy and watch it on HD for $2.99 or on SD for $1.99. These are actually Amazon’s base prices for popular TV series in the US. You can buy the entire episodes of Walking Dead Season 5 in HD for $41.99.
For movies, the average rental price (48-hour window) is $4.99. You have 30 days from when you rent to start watching, and once you start watching, you have a 24-hour or 48-hour window to finish watching before the movie automatically disappears on your library.
Price varies if you want to buy the movie or TV series. You can buy movies like Interstellar and American Sniper for $19.99 each in HD.
The Instant Stuff – Device, Streaming, Download
You have two options, download the video or watch it via web streaming. Worried about device compatibility? Instant videos can play on almost all type of devices – game consoles, TVs or media players. Amazon has a list of compatible devices in case you want to check.
If you own an Amazon Fire TV or a Kindle Fire HD device, then you can enjoy not only videos, but also the different services offered by Amazon.
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Tired of renting? Buying individually seems to be more expensive? The solution is to subscribe to Amazon Prime. Upon subscription, you can watch unlimited movies and TV shows, listen to unlimited digital music, read 500,000 free ebooks, enjoy 2-day free shipping of items purchase from Amazon store and more. Everything is for only $99 per year!
If you’re already subscribed at Prime, prices for movies and TV series will be $0.
The Video Content Providers – EPIX, HBO, Amazon Studios
So where are those videos coming from? The movies and TV series come from Paramount Pictures, Lionsgate, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures, HBO, Amazon Studios and several other content providers. Music are from EMI, Sony, Universal and Warner.
It is easy to connect the dots between the parent Amazon.com and its subsidiary VOD service. Amazon Prime is the strongest link to almost all of Amazon’s departments. The Prime logo does the big marketing move and with all these attractive movie covers, catchy titles, easy-to-access trailers, 30-day free trial period, subscription that you can cancel anytime, Amazon is a tough wall to break in this line of business.
There’s a lot buzz about the Netflix vs. Amazon competition. Whichever side are you, my suggestion is just bring in the pop corns and enjoy watching. Movies and TV series were never been this cheap and fast-to-get before!
