According to Digiday, Amazon’s new Video Direct product is attracting more than a few media publishers who are taking advantage of the service’s ability to offer premium content that people have to pay to subscribe to in addition to their Amazon Prime service. Those producers are wooed by the fact that, yes, people have to pay to get that content and the Amazon interface makes that transaction fairly seemless. What remains to be seen is whether that model can achieve any scale or if it’s still just a niche product, which is the case so far. It’s an addition revenue stream, sure, but the quality of the content – not to mention continued participation – is dependent on subscriptions equaling or surpassing the cost of production. If it can’t clear that hurdle it won’t be cost-effective to keep making the videos. It will also be interesting to see how publishers bifurcate their efforts, putting X on Amazon Video Direct and Y on YouTube to reach different audiences with different material. That’s the best bet, to provide distinct content with unique value propositions, but that’s not always how these things play out.

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