By CultureBanx Team
- IMDb Freedive streaming platform will now be free and ad supported
- African Americans stream videos more frequently than the total U.S. population
Film and TV website IMDb is gearing up to take a larger share of the ad market with its free streaming video channel. The Amazon (AMZN -0.95%) owned platform wants to grab a larger share of the digital ad market with “IMDb Freedive” and attract more viewers. With African Americans streaming videos more frequently on all devices than the total U.S. population, it will be important for Amazon’s IMDb to connect with these viewers to get advertisers who want to be in front of this audience.
Why This Matters: Even though IMDb’s streaming service will be free, competition is getting intense in this space. IMDb needs to create authentic content connections with African Americans, as Nielsen found they are the top consumers of streaming video.
At this point Amazon is an OG in the streaming video space through its Prime Video service. Ad sales at Amazon are expected to jump $28.4 billion over the next five years, according to Cowen. Currently, the majority of their ad business comes from the retail site. EMarketer found the e-commerce company’s ad revenues were on pace to double in 2018 to $5.83 billion.
Right now Amazon has just 4% of the digital ad market
Right now Amazon has just 4% of the digital ad market. The Wall Street Journal puts them in the number three spot in the U.S. digital ad market, behind the two dominant players, Google (GOOG -1.23%) and Facebook (FB -0.28%). Unlike these companies, Amazon has actual purchase data from its retail site that it can use to entice advertisers.
Situational Awareness: The next step for IMDb Freedive will be to figure out how to get content that directly speaks to an African American audience. Netflix (NFLX +3.98%) already has a deep roster of major black content creators on their team from the Obamas, to Shonda Rhimes and even Kenya Barrish, just to name a few but they are subscription based. Additionally, as part of Apple’s (AAPL -0.98%) original content strategy to entice more African American viewers to the platform, they struck a multi-year content partnership deal with Oprah Winfrey last summer.
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