Amazon reps have shot down an Ad Age report saying the tech giant is developing an ad-supported video platform.
“We have no plans to create a free, ad-supported version of Prime Video,” said Cat Kelty, spokeswoman for Amazon, in a statement emailed to Fierce.
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On Monday, Ad Age quoted an advertising agency official with purported inside knowledge of Amazon’s plans to develop a free-to-consumer platform that would complement the company’s popular subscription video-on-demand service. The ad executive said Amazon was out in the studio marketplace, offering content creators revenue-sharing deals.
"Amazon is taking a smart approach," the agency executive told Ad Age. "The only way to strike these deals is to provide a revenue share and share data insights.”
An ad-supported programming service would diversify Amazon out of the saturated SVOD market and place it in an emerging area of free-to-consumer platforms—a position currently being staked out by Facebook and its recently launched Watch platform. And, of course, Google has mined the free, ad-supported video market for more than a decade with YouTube.
"Amazon is doubling down on its own media and content, and thinking about how to make that available,” the ad agency executive added. "The way to do that is a freemium model.”