In a statement released Wednesday, Amazon announced that it is renaming its free-to-stream, ad-supported service from IMDb TV to Amazon Freevee.
The programme, formerly known as IMDb Freedive, was released in 2019.
Advertiser-supported, on-demand options are becoming more popular in a market that is flooded with subscription services.
Amazon entered the ad-supported video streaming market with IMDb TV three years ago, and has since expanded its offerings. Later this month, the product will be rebranded under a new moniker.
On April 27, IMDb TV will be rebranded as Amazon Freevee, a moniker that the company believes more accurately reflects the service’s free nature.
The ad-supported video-on-demand (AVOD) market has exploded in recent years, gaining impetus during the coronavirus pandemic as customers streamed an increasing number of movies and television episodes. Pluto TV from Paramount Global, Crackle, Tubi, and the Roku Channel from Roku are just a few of the competitors.
Amazon is attempting to be on both sides of the streaming business at the same time. Its Prime Video service is offered as a standalone $9-per-month subscription or as part of the entire Prime membership, which costs $15 per month. Amazon competes with the likes of Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, HBO Max, and NBCUniversal’s Peacock on the streaming video front, while some of those services also provide free ad-supported tiers of service.
Even though paid subscription services continue to dominate the streaming market, free and ad-supported options are gaining ground. A survey conducted by Nielsen found that roughly 34% of homes in the United States that had access to video streaming services used ad-supported streaming services in January 2021.
IMDb, the film and television website that Amazon purchased in 1998, debuted a free-to-stream service in 2019 under the name IMDb Freedive, which is now available worldwide. Amazon announced on Wednesday that the product has experienced “tremendous growth,” with the number of monthly active users more than tripling in the past two years.
In May, Amazon stated that it had 120 million monthly active users across all of its ad-supported video programming, which included IMDb TV, Twitch, live sports, and other channels. Amazon has not provided an active user metric for IMDb TV.
Amazon aims to expand Freevee’s roster of original television shows and movies later this year, according to the firm.
We look forward to building on this momentum with an expanding slate of imaginative and broadly appealing Originals, and we are pleased to establish Freevee as the top AVOD service with content viewers demand,” Jennifer Salke, Amazon Studios’ president and chief executive, said in a statement.
