Amazon recently announced that it passed the 200 million subscriber mark. This puts it within striking distance of Netflix which announced it reached 204 million subscribers in its 2020 report. Of course with Amazon Prime members signing up for a range of benefits such as free 2 day shipping it is impossible to tell how many of these watch Prime Video content.
Here we take a look at how demand for Amazon’s original content has fared so far this year.
In the first quarter of this year, 12.2% of global demand for digital original series was for an Amazon Prime Video original. This share is impressive because it is twice that of the platforms with the next highest demand share, Hulu and Disney+.
In terms of global audience attention, compared to Netflix, Amazon is still well behind the leader which has just over 50% share for the quarter. However, the fact that Amazon can attract nearly as many subscribers globally while producing content that only receives a fraction of the attention of Netflix’s series is a reminder of the different business models of these two companies. Netflix is a pure play streaming service while streaming is only part of the Amazon value proposition to customers.
The global share of demand for Amazon’s original content has been on a consistent downward trajectory since October 2020 when it reached a 14.3% share, its highest in 2020, following the release of the second season of The Boys. In fact, despite concluding in October 2020, The Boys was Amazon Prime Video’s most in-demand original series in Q1 2021.
While Amazon’s globally popular originals The Boys and The Expanse were the platform’s top originals for the quarter, it is notable that 4 of the 10 most globally in-demand series were Amazon originals from India. This underscores the importance of the Indian market in the world of global content and shows how Amazon’s investments here in local content like Mirzapur and The Family Man are paying off.
