Behind Amazon India’s content-to-commerce strategy | WARC | The Feed

Behind Amazon India’s content-to-commerce strategy

Amazon aims to tap India’s rapidly growing video streaming market with miniTV, an ad-supported streaming service inside its shopping app that attracts viewers who become online shoppers over time.

Context

Unlike Prime Video, which requires an annual subscription, all users need to access miniTV content is an Amazon login. Launched almost two years ago, content has evolved from short-form influencer clips and product reviews to embrace comedy, drama and longer-form series being produced by entertainment studios, which keep viewers coming back. MiniTV now attracts around two million daily active users.

Why it matters

It’s a potential double-win for the e-commerce giant: as well as growing the company’s ad business and inventory for advertisers, it could become a cost-effective way to acquire customers.

Already there are signs it’s working. “MiniTV has proven some of the initial business hypothesis – it is leading to low cost of customer acquisition,” a senior Amazon executive told Rest of World. “Customers who start on miniTV tend to shop more on Amazon.” 

Where next?

• More content genres: “We are experimenting with multiple content types and genres to see how our viewers react and accordingly feed those signals in our content offering,” according to a miniTV spokesperson.
• New ad formats: miniTV recently launched mobile shoppable ads and is currently testing “nudges” that showcase ads without interrupting content.

Key quote

“This seems to be a great strategy for consumers to come into the Amazon habit through video, and then [have the company] be able to retain them either through shopping, commerce, music, and through whatever they want to offer going forward” – Uday Sodhi, senior partner at Kurate Digital Consulting.

Sourced from Rest of World

[Image: Amazon]