Amazon owned IMDb to launch a new free video service

It has been reported that the Amazon owned service IMDb is expected to reveal that it will be launching a new free movie service this week. IMDd stands for Internet Movie Database and it’s a website consisting of information related to films and TV shows including cast and crew details, plot summaries, trivia and user-generated fan reviews and ratings.

The new service, which will be similar to The Roku Channel or something like Hulu, will feature TV shows and movies rather than new content. The reports say that it will be available to all Fire TV users and not just accessible to Amazon Prime video users. The service will reportedly be announced as part of the Advertising Week events in the United States.

The service is rumoured to be called Free Dive and Amazon is apparently in talks with 3 media companies with a view to providing IMDb users with access to older films and TV series.

Amazon is increasingly interested in paid-for advertising and monetising the content it has and the massive audience it attracts. IMDb is well regarded and authoritative as well as having a loyal reading following. While Amazon is now the third-largest digital advertiser, it’s still well behind Google and Facebook.

The service will also help Amazon continue to grow its share of the digital advertising market, which is dominated by Google and Facebook. According to eMarketer, Amazon is now the third-largest digital advertiser, with about 4 percent of the market; Google and Facebook combined have more than 57 percent.
– CNBC

Amazon’s ad spend is relatively small compared to search engines and apparently somewhere in the region of $2 billion in Q1 2018. (The figure Amazon gives is explained as ‘Primarily includes sales of advertising services, as well as sales related to our other service offerings’.) That represents year on year growth of 132%. Amazon is also increasingly interested in monetising video and other content as evidenced by recent investments in games platform Twitch.