The Man in the High Castle is currently in production on its third season, while Good Girls Revolt was cancelled after its first.Īmazon’s highest profile series to date is The Grand Tour, its motoring series featuring the former Top Gear hosts of Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May. Good Girls Revolt, on the other hand, was an equally well-received show that cost $81 million to produce, generating a lower volume of 52,000 first streams – leading to a much higher cost of around $1,500 per new customer. In early 2017, it had 8 million US viewers, and generated 1.15 million first streams – leading to an acquisition cost of $63 per subscriber. The Man in the High Castle is one of Amazon’s most popular original series and cost $72 million to produce and market. Dividing each show by the number of first streams it generates gives Amazon an idea of how much it costs to acquire each Prime subscriber – the more popular the show, the less expensive the acquisition, and the more effective the content is. This “first stream” is then credited with enticing that person to start or renew a Prime subscription. Amazon reportedly judges the impact of video upon Prime membership by looking at what customers first stream when they sign up. The documents primarily cover that period from 2014 to 2017 (in the US, UK, Germany, Austria and Japan), and, as Amazon begins to cancel shows for the first time, they give us an idea of how its original series have grown Amazon’s body of subscribers.Īccording to Reuters’ analysts, Prime Video’s series account for as much as a quarter of total Prime membership sign-ups in those years. The margins are looser and the revenue sources are more diverse, which means that Amazon can spend big when it needs to.Īnd that’s exactly what Amazon is now starting to do, as it moves into more mainstream, high-profile projects, following a period of awards-friendly smaller shows. Amazon, on the other hand, relies upon its shows to bring in more customers, so they can spend even more money on other things. Netflix relies upon its shows to bring in more subscribers, thus boosting its monthly income, as well as retain existing users. The result means that Amazon doesn’t have the same financial concerns as its competition. Once signed up, those who both stream video and shop from Amazon are more likely to renew that annual subscription at the end of a year.
It is no surprise, then, that while you can subscribe to Amazon Prime Video for £5.99 a month, with no contract, Amazon prefers to highlight its full Prime membership to new users, and many media publications follow their lead by mistakenly referring to Amazon Prime Video as simply “Amazon Prime”. Because if you look at Prime members, they buy more on Amazon than non-Prime members.” Or, as CEO Jeff Bezos put it in 2016: “When we win a Golden Globe, it helps us sell more shoes. More viewers means more customers in their overall shop.
That membership includes free next-day delivery in the UK, which encourages those who do sign up to use Amazon more for their day-to-day purchases. For Amazon, Prime Video is part of the value added to an Amazon Prime membership, which costs £79 a year. While Netflix and Amazon are often pitted against each other, the comparison can be misleading: Amazon’s Prime Video platform chases the same customers, but in a very different way. Now, though, new documents published by Reuters give us an inside look at the figures that power Prime Video. While Netflix is known for keeping its cards to its chest, though, Amazon is just as discreet: the online giant doesn’t like to announce its number of Amazon Prime members, let alone break it down into how many viewers its individual Amazon Prime Video shows and films have. The online video industry is one of countless calculations and closely guarded secrets.