Last February, Amazon had 28 million unique viewers for its video content, far behind Yahoo’s 43 million unique viewers. But according to fresh comScore numbers, Amazon had vaulted to nearly 38 million uniques by July, while Yahoo had dropped to 42 million. The video distribution landscape is now changing at an amazing clip. What is even more jaw-dropping than Amazon’s unique viewer growth is the number of minutes spent by an average viewer; it doubled from 13 minutes to 26 minutes in just six months. Yahoo’s average viewing time also grew substantially, from 53 minutes to 77 minutes.
Amazon’s breakneck video delivery growth is probably directly linked to its ongoing tablet market share gains in the United States. The Bezos strategy of pricing the most affordable Kindle Fire tablet at a dirt cheap $159 and undermining Apple this way is clearly working like a charm. The cheapo Kindles are acting as a gateway to Amazon’s video services, probably having a particularly big impact on families with children. Video giants like VEVO and Viacom Digital look positively stagnant in comparison. Amazon has already overtaken Turner Digital.
At this rate, Amazon is set to become one of the leading online video distributors in America in short order, and it will soon woo even more users with a fresh round of Kindle Fire tablets with cutting-edge specs.
What is particularly impressive is that even as Amazon’s video viewing time has doubled, some leading rivals like Microsoft actually delivered declining minutes per viewer. Amazon has found a way to seduce its mushrooming customer base into rapidly increasing content consumption. It’s a heck of a double whammy.
