ITV

Tag: Amazon

  • YouTube to release first Indian original content soon

    YouTube to release first Indian original content soon

    MUMBAI: Streamers in India are about to get new delight. YouTube is bringing its first Indian original in the coming weeks called ARRived under an ad-supported model. The streaming giant has joined hands with music maestro AR Rahman for the show. Earlier also, YouTube global head original programming Susanne Daniels said that it is planning scripted series and original programming for international markets including India.

    “Affordable data costs are driving video consumption in India, data usage is about 8 GB a month per subscriber. This has pushed online video consumption as well, which is now about 75 per cent of all mobile traffic as per industry reports,” YouTube India entertainment head Satya Raghavan said.

    While in many countries YouTube offers its originals under the subscription model, in India it doesn’t have any premium model currently. According to some media reports, it will eventually come up with the premium service in India. YouTube’s international rivals Netflix and Amazon Prime have already released original shows in the country, some of which has been critically acclaimed too along with getting high popularity. The local OTT players are also eyeing the same pie in the growing video market. Players like ZEE5, Voot, ALTBalaji, Viu, Eros Now also have a pipeline of original shows to woo the audience. On the other hand, Hotstar has taken the top position among OTT players according to several reports.

    “Our DNA is built around partnerships, so a lot of competitors are our partners we work closely with, some of them are large advertisers of ours, some of them are large content partners. So for us, it is about growing the video pie not just for our own creators but for the entire online video industry for sure,” Raghavan commented.

    The company said it had run two sponsored shows as pilots, working closely with advertisers to test the market. It also claimed to have received a good response. Globally, YouTube Originals has released over 60 projects to date and plans to release more than 50 new shows next year.

  • Amazon’s festive season ad asks consumers to splurge with their ‘Dil-Dimaag’

    Amazon’s festive season ad asks consumers to splurge with their ‘Dil-Dimaag’

    MUMBAI: Amazon India has kicked off the upcoming season with its campaign ‘Dil-Dimaag’.

    Aimed at preparing customers for the festive season, the campaign showcases the ease and convenience of shopping on amazon.in  in some of the most loved categories of smartphones, home appliances, kitchen and fashion. 

    The campaign features three different TVCs and is on air from 20 August 2018.

    Each TVC starts with the omnipresent dilemma between the heart and the mind highlighting the various benefits of buying on Amazon such as wide range of top brands, scheduled and damage free delivery, 48-hour installation and 30-day return policy. The Dil-Dimaag campaign seeks to establish Amazon.in as the preferred choice for customers buying needs, be it festive shopping or daily essentials.

    Conceptualised by Leo Burnett Orchard and directed by Jerald Packiasamy of Still Waters Films, the campaign brings alive the heart and mind through twin characters in the film and showcases the eternal debate between the two when it comes to shopping online. With the heart (dil) eventually convinced as the mind (dimaag).

    Amazon India director for mass and brand marketing Ravi Desai says, “When it comes to shopping on Amazon we see that there is a conflict between the heart and mind of consumers. There is a desire to shop on Amazon but they are held back by certain things which they are unaware of. The Dil-Dimaag campaign seeks to help customers understand our offerings better especially in categories where purchases are planned in advance. The upcoming festive season will be the biggest celebration yet on Amazon.in where customers can expect the widest selection, the best deals and maximum savings.

    “As a lead-up to the festive season, our campaign seeks to provide information and clear doubts as our customers prepare their shopping lists. This season is going to be our biggest ever in terms of traffic, new customers, digital payment adoption as well as sales,” he adds. 

    Leo Burnett Orchard executive creative director Neel Roy mentions, “Each of the stories we chose to execute is based on insights into various concerns with online shopping. Your mind and heart are always in a state of conflict. When doubts get clarified with logical answers, decision making becomes easy. So we chose a simple storytelling format with a small twist. We told these stories using twins. It was a fun way to execute ‘Dil and Dimaag’ that conveyed our intended message that when both mind and heart agree, your decision becomes a whole lot easier.”

  • Netflix, Amazon woo Indians with different business models

    Netflix, Amazon woo Indians with different business models

    MUMBAI: The vast scope of Indian OTT market is undeniable. Two global streaming giants Netflix and Amazon started their endeavour in India around the same time but the latter stands at a better position. Netflix is enriching its local content library in a great momentum hooking top faces from Bollywood. While the big bosses, Jeff Bezos and Reed Hastings, both have mentioned the Indian market as an important part of their long term strategy, they are approaching the market with entirely different business models.

    From the beginning Amazon Prime Video has caught the pulse of the market that being locally relevant is the necessity. Within one year of its rollout in India, it premiered its first Indian original series Inside Edge starring Richa Chada, Tanuj Virwani, Vivek Oberoi and Angad Bedi. The story revolves around a fictional T20 cricket team, Mumbai Mavericks. It continued its march in the local library with Breathe starring R Madhavan which was even dubbed in two local languages Tamil and Telugu.

    Despite starting with fiction it has not limited its variety. From music reality show to standup comedy, it has touched various genres which appeal to Indian audiences easily. While in The Remix celebrity judges Sunidhi Chauhan and Amit Trivedi were big bets to woo audiences, for Comicstaan it could gather India’s rising stars of the comedy scene – Tanmay Bhat, Biswa Kalyan Rath, Kanan Gill, Kenny Sebastian, Kaneez Surka, Naveen Richard and Sapan Verma as judges.

    On the other hand, while Netflix is a late entrant to the Indian original content segment, it is launching and announcing back to back originals in a short span as it did in the global market too. Starting from a romantic comedy like Love Per Square Foot to Lust Stories to its critically acclaimed first Indian original web series Sacred Games it has started offering Indian audiences high quality productions in good quantity. Netflix is also trying to tap mass audience genres including horror in Ghoul and cricket and corruption in Selection Day. “With the triplet of Raw Stories, Sacred Games, and Ghoul, we are really getting some nice momentum in our India growth,” Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said. Moreover, other than India, Sacred Games has been critically acclaimed outside the country also.

    “Netflix has started taking “made in India” content to a global audience, which is a good thing to happen for India. It is time India exported its fabulous storytelling abilities, and what better platforms than these?” media and entertainment advisory services partner at Ernst & Young Ashish Pherwani said.

    India, holding a vast cultural difference, makes the play tougher for international players. Only Hindi content will not be enough for the platforms to win over the streamers across the country. From this aspect, Amazon is ahead in the race not only did because of the launch of its first Amazon Exclusive in Telugu, Gang Star this June but also the library of regional movies. Even in terms of overall library of Indian movies Amazon’s streaming service is way better than Netflix. After its Q2 result, Netflix executives themselves admitted the need to scale up its regional content. “We’ve got a long way to go to expand languages and many other aspects to be able to cover the Indian market, to be a broad Indian product,” Netflix CEO commented. Especially at this moment while the next wave of OTT content consumption growth is coming from Tier II, Tier III cities, both the platforms highly needs to focus on regional content.

    The basic difference lies between the business models of these two honchos. Netflix is targeting the affluent households as well as the audience that adores quality content and is ready to pay for its high pricing model. While still now Netflix is running with a niche approach, Amazon has a larger play in the country with its e-commerce business. Amazon lures streamers with its Amazon Prime services. Netflix is still experimenting with its pricing models in the country while Amazon has introduced a new monthly subscription at Rs 129 other than its yearly model.

    “Both of them are trying to invest a lot in Indian market by doing two things one is obviously creating original Indian content but also getting content from overseas into India. From that perspective, as both of them are doing it from a different price point, you can never tell that one is way ahead of the other,” PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) partner and leader, media and entertainment Frank D’Souza said.

    “Amazon has the advantage because it is offering music, prime services, the whole game. For Amazon, it is about how to keep the customer on its platform as long as possible. Whether that helps in sales of products, video consumption, audio consumption their strategy is different. Netflix is a pure video play. Hence for Netflix, the question is that is original content enough to attract customers? The answer could be yes because the economies are different,” he added.

    Even so, their pricing is higher as compared to the rates offered by local DTH and cable operators who offer a huge array of channels at a low cost. For SVOD OTT platforms, a consumer has to pay for subscription on top of data prices.

    However, as data prices are reducing, the launch of FTTH service by Jio creates more opportunities for entire OTT market in India. “Indian OTT subscriber base is growing on the back of some of the lowest data charges in the world. In addition, the launch of Jio Fiber will enable consumption of digital content on the larger screens. This will bode well for subscribers of Netflix and Amazon Prime, and help them meet their growth targets. We estimate a 6x growth in regular OTT paid subscribers by 2020,” Pherwani commented.

    While ultimately content will be the king for both Netflix and Amazon, especially in a market where local players like Hotstar, ALTBalaji, Eros Now, ZEE5 are betting big with differentiated content including sports, regional and Bollywood movies, regional originals, partnerships like Amazon-Airtel, Netflix-Tata Sky will also help both the platforms for winning more market share in the country. However, along with the localised content, the charm of The Crown, House of Cards, Goliath never fades away!

  • Amazon posts stronger-than-expected Q2 result

    MUMBAI: E-commerce giant Amazon posted much-stronger-than-expected second quarter earnings. Owing to growth in prime subscriptions, cloud computing and nascent advertising business, the company topped $2 billion in quarterly profit for the first time in its history. Analysts predict those two factors will continue to push the company forward in coming quarters.

    Net income increased to $2.5 billion in the second quarter while last year in the same quarter the growth was $197 million. Net sales increased 39 per cent to $52.9 billion in the second quarter, compared with $38.0 billion in second quarter 2017. However, the sales growth was slightly below Wall Street’s estimates.

    “A big contributor to the quarter and the last few quarters obviously has been strong growth in our highest profitability businesses and also advertising,” CFO Brian Olsavsky said. “We’ve seen a greater-than-expected efficiency in a lot of our spend in things like warehouses, data centres, marketing.”

    This was the third consecutive quarter that Amazon has topped $1 billion in profit. Amazon’s cloud computing business, Amazon Web Services division, jumped to more than $6 billion in sales for the quarter. “Amazon Web Services is basically the silver bullet for them for future growth,” Synovus Trust senior portfolio manager Dan Morgan said as quoted by CNN.

    “I would say that, in addition to the operating efficiencies, advertising is also starting to make an impact on gross profit, although advertising is smaller in the international segment than it’s in North America, it’s growing at a same rapid clip year-over-year,” Olasavsky said in an earnings call.

    “We continue to invest. We’re investing in India obviously, and have seen good traction there. We just passed our Fifth Year Anniversary – celebrated our Fifth Year Anniversary, as the most visited site in India. So we think there’s a lot of great innovation that has continued to occur for Indian consumers and sellers, and that will continue,” he commented on Indian market.

    Amazon is on an upward journey this year. Earlier this month, its market value topped $900 billion for the first time. Following the result, the stock jumped 3 per cent in afterhours trading.

  • Serie A club, Napoli partners Amazon to launch merchandise store

    Serie A club, Napoli partners Amazon to launch merchandise store

    MUMBAI: The runner-up club of 2017-18 season, Napoli in Serie A has tied-up with e-commerce giant Amazon to launch an exclusive brand store. The Napoli Amazon brand store has been launched featuring official team products from the club’s technical supplier Kappa along with a full range of Napoli Calcio-licensed merchandise.

    Napoli hope the new partnership will make it easier for its international fans to access kit and merchandise.

    Napoli president Aurelio De Laurentiis said, “Napoli have become a regular fixture among the top 20 clubs in UEFA rankings, have over 40 million fans worldwide as well as a further 120 million with a passing interest. It is very important to us to be able to offer them easy access to our merchandise, and Amazon offer extraordinarily efficient distribution and order management services,” according to Sportspromedia.com.

    The club released its 2018-19 season kit which is starting from 19 August 2018 and the partnership will also reach other markets like Italy, France, the UK and Spain, with the aim to launch in the North American market in the near future.

    The Amazon partnership is part of the club’s international development strategy designed to strengthen the Napoli brand in foreign markets.

  • Amazon woos Prime Day shoppers with more Prime Video and Music content

    Amazon woos Prime Day shoppers with more Prime Video and Music content

    MUMBAI: Amazon Prime Day’s second edition, featuring more than one million deals, is starting this Monday. As a prelude to the mega sale, the e-commerce giant has been offering more entertainment on its Prime Video and Prime Music platforms to keep subscribers engaged.

    One week prior to the sale, to be precise, from 10 July, it started dropping titles with the release of the Amitabh Bachchan starrer 102 Not Out. Raazi and Transformers: The Last Night are also slated for release. Members also have access to other blockbusters including Dunkirk and a Telugu hit Officer. Along with new international blockbusters, regional titles are also available.

    Amazon wants to take the Prime Day concept beyond products. Moreover, prime members have been getting access to specially curated playlists in several Indian languages on Prime Music. Till the last day of the sale Amazon will have more for the members who tune in to its music platform.

    This year Amazon Prime Day’s global reach has been extended to four more countries including Australia, Singapore, Netherlands and Luxembourg.

  • Netflix dethrones HBO’s 17-year reign at Emmys with 112 nominations

    Netflix dethrones HBO’s 17-year reign at Emmys with 112 nominations

    MUMBAI: HBO needs to guard its territory. The New York based network has been holding the position of the most nominated network for the last 17 years at the prestigious Emmy Award. Netflix, the new content king, has dethroned HBO this year with 112 nominations.

    The 70th annual Primetime Emmy awards is to be held on Monday, 17 September. Last time, the streaming giant scored 91 awards. High-profile projects including The Crown, Stranger Things, Godless and GLOW added big to the list each with ten or more than ten nominations.

    “We are particularly enthused to see the breadth of our programming celebrated with nominations spread across 40 new and returning titles which showcase our varied and expansive slate—comedies, dramas, movies, limited series, documentary, variety, animation, and reality,” Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos said.

    However, HBO is also not far behind Netflix with 108 nominations with Game of Thrones leading the way for the network. “HBO is very pleased with its 108 nominations, especially the wide range over so many categories,” the network also said in a statement. But it’s a real challenge for networks to keep pace with Netflix’s spending on content. The streaming giant has planned to spend $8 billion this year, focusing highly on originals.

    Other streaming platforms including Hulu, Amazon have also gathered a good number of nominations with 27 and 22 respectively. Critically acclaimed The Handmaid’s Tale has worked as the game changer for Hulu and Amazon is indebted to The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.

    “If you look at Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon and you add together their nominations at 161, and you add four platforms called networks together and you have 159, I think you see where things are headed. And Apple isn’t even in the game yet,” executive producer of The Handmaid’s Tale Warren Littlefield said.

  • Walmart to focus on small startup acquihires in India

    Walmart to focus on small startup acquihires in India

    MUMBAI: Walmart is looking for tech acquisitions in India. The retailer, which agreed to acquire home-grown e-commerce platform Flipkart in May, is now looking for tech acquisition to strengthen its technology unit Walmart Labs.

    Unlike other overseas internet companies such as Amazon and Google, the Arkansas-based company will eye acqui-hire/acquisitions involving small amounts. Acqui-hiring refers to the practice of buying a company in a cut-price deal primarily for the purpose of ‘hiring’ the company’s founders and key employees.

    “We got close to doing a couple of (acquisitions)… nothing that was a perfect fit. There were a couple that would have been interesting additions to our competitive intelligence platform. I’m looking at (acquisition candidates) in merchandising, machine learning right now,” said Walmart chief technology officer Jeremy King as quoted by publication Mint.

    King also said that Walmart Labs will hire 2,000 engineers across the world, including India. Last year, Walmart Labs hired Hari Vasudev from Flipkart to head its Bengaluru office. Vasudev is also now acting head of data science for Walmart globally. Walmart Labs will hire more senior tech talent in Bengaluru.

    “The initial team in Bengaluru was only 30 people and now we have several hundreds. We’re hiring machine learning experts, anyone who’s got merchandising and supply chain experience, data science and cloud experts… just high-quality engineers. We also have some product openings,” the report quoted him as stating.

    Having set up its centre in Bengaluru, Walmart completes the acquisition of Flipkart, which is expected to be wrapped up this quarter; Walmart Labs will work closely with the tech team of the Indian online retailer. Other American retail and tech firms such as Amazon, Uber, Target and others have tech centres in Bengaluru as hiring engineers here is far cheaper than in the US.

    The acquisitions will, however, be of a much smaller size in comparison to the investment of $16 billion to buy 77 per cent stake in Flipkart.

  • Facebook acquires EPL rights for 2019-22

    Facebook acquires EPL rights for 2019-22

    MUMBAI: Broadcasters need to be careful of their turf as digital players are swooping in to pick sporting rights. Facebook has acquired the English Premier League rights for the Southeast Asia territory by paying £200 million.

    Facebook made its intentions clear to move into sports by bidding around Rs 3000 crore for the digital rights of Indian Premier League in September last year and hiring Eurosport CEO Peter Hutton earlier this year.

    According to Thedrum.com, Facebook has powered ahead of BeIN Sports and Fox Sports Asia to secure the exclusive rights to broadcast live Premier League matches in Southeast Asia from 2019. The coverage of English soccer’s top flight in Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos is for a three-year period covering 2019 to 2022.

    The rights package includes all 380 Premier League matches each season in what is Facebook’s biggest move into the live sports market to date.

    Along with Amazon, Facebook was also widely tipped to make a bid for the Premier League’s domestic rights this year, with the league specifically structuring two packages to make it more attractive to the tech giants. As Facebook stayed away, it was ultimately Amazon who secured the package of 20 live matches each season for three years from 2019.

  • Amazon launches Exclusive mobile phones OnePlus 6, Moto G6, Redmi 5, RealMe 1 and more on Prime Now ahead of Prime Day

    Amazon launches Exclusive mobile phones OnePlus 6, Moto G6, Redmi 5, RealMe 1 and more on Prime Now ahead of Prime Day

    MUMBAI: Amazon today announced the launch of its Bestseller Exclusive mobile phones OnePlus6, MotoG, Redmi and RealMe on Prime Now. This is in addition to the recently launched Amazon Devices selection of Fire TV Stick, All New Kindle, Kindle Paperwhite (WiFi), Echo Dot and Echo on Prime Now.

    “We are excited to add the bestselling Amazon Exclusive mobile phones to Prime Now selection of over 10,000 products available in hours. These consumer electronics categories have seen rapid adoption and have grown 10x month-on-month since launch. In fact, our launch offer on Amazon Devices led to overwhelming demand leading to a sell-out of the Fire TV stick within 72 hours!” said Siddharth Nambiar – Head of Prime Now, India.

    Prime Now, an app-only ultrafast service, is available to customers in Bengaluru, Mumbai, New Delhi and Hyderabad catering to the urban family that values speed and convenience.  Customers in these cities will now have access to the fastest and most convenient delivery on mobile phones from leading brands including, OnePlus, Xiaomi, Samsung and Motorola among others. Prime Now provides exclusive access to 2-hour ultra-fast delivery to Prime members anytime between 6 am to midnight, and the most convenient same-day 2-hour slots from 6 AM to 12 Midnight for all customers.

    This Prime Day, members can now look forward to 2-hour ultra-fast delivery of bestselling smartphones along with Amazon Devices, a select range of consumer electronics, home & kitchen supplies, fruits & vegetables, grocery, staples, meats, and more. To meet this delivery promise and on-time performance, Amazon India has 15 fulfilment centers equipped with temperature-controlled zones.

    To celebrate Prime Day, members shopping through the Prime Now app starting today can get 25% off on Grocery orders above INR 1500 until July 15, 2018. New customers on Prime Now during this period will get up to INR 100 cashback for their first purchase above INR 100.

    Prime Day is an exclusive 36-hour celebration from 12 noon on July 16 to midnight on July 17. During Prime Day, members can enjoy over 200 exclusive launches, blockbuster deals, entertainment premiers and more.