Some announce, others create facts: While Netflix has so far only announced the framework data for the advertising-financed version of the streaming service – it is scheduled to start in early 2023 in selected, but unspecified countries – the new era has already begun for competitor Amazon. Since Wednesday it has been saying: “Great films and series. For free. Freevee – stream free”.
For some time now it has been clear that the number of subscriptions will not skyrocket. Netflix had even had to cope with a slight drop in paid subscriptions and was punished for it on the stock market. The situation is somewhat different for Amazon, since Jeff Bezos’ group rests on many pillars, which include the streaming service for video and audio, first and foremost the mail order business, but also the cloud service AWS. A slight drop in Prime Video subscription numbers would be more bearable, but Amazon now apparently wants to prevent that with Freevee.
Ted Sarandos, deputy head of Netflix, had announced that most of the content would also be available in the advertising-financed area, but by no means all of it. Amazon Prime already had various offers. Some of the content was free for all Amazon Prime subscribers to see, while other films and series had to be paid extra. Freevee is a new service that lets you watch films and series at no additional cost, but with commercial breaks. After the USA and Great Britain, Germany is the third country in which this offer is placed. Austria is to follow as another European country at a later date.
“We offer users an offer that they would typically expect behind a paywall,” said an Amazon spokesman for the German Press Agency. The mix should consist of own productions, licensed films and series and perspectively linear TV channels.
Currently, Freevee users are suggested series such as “Bosch” and “Peaky Blinders” as well as films such as “The Centenarian Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared” or “Hotel Mumbai”. A small note “ads” indicates that this is content that can be fetched with Freevee. It is not known whether the series adaptation of “Lord of the Rings”, which will start in early September, is also part of this.
Amazon did not want to provide any information on the economic expectations of Freevee, neither on the targeted number of users nor on the advertising revenue. The model of advertising-financed streaming services has a certain tradition in Germany. The German private broadcasting groups RTL and ProSiebenSat1 offer similar services with RTL and Joyn. Here, too, you can choose between free access with advertising and paid solutions.
The pay-TV provider Sky also places advertising on its paid streaming service, albeit to a lesser extent.
