Amazon is doubling down on free ad-supported content with today’s introduction of Fire TV Channels, its new free and ad-supported (FAST) video experience coming to Fire TV devices this week. Although Fire TV had previously offered FAST content, Fire TV channels will now be continuously updated throughout the day and integrated into various areas of the Fire TV interface, including rows on the home screen, within the tab “Free” from Fire TV and in specific categories. pages dedicated to certain genres.
In addition, Fire TV is gaining a suite of new FAST channels from NHL, Xbox and TMZ, as well as a new travel category with content from Tastemade Travel, “Rick Steves’ Europe,” “Travel Hacks” and soon, Condé. Unpleasant traveler. Later, Fire TV Channels will also include content from the PGA.
The company explained that this update to Fire TV was based on customer behavior and the growing demand for free streaming content.
“We have offered some of this [FAST] content for a while for customers – we’ve helped them discover it throughout the [user interface] by having rows of content, for example, on ‘Home’ or other pages,” explains Charlotte Maines, Director of Advertising, Monetization, Marketing and Engagement at Fire TV. “We’ve seen that they’ve been engaging with it when we show it topically… And what we’ve seen in the last six months alone is monthly streamed hours of this content has grown by 300%. So we know it’s working for our customers,” she added.
The growth can be attributed to several factors, the executive said. For one thing, customers have reached a kind of saturation point with video-on-demand streaming offerings and have no interest in adding more subscriptions to their monthly bills, nor do they want to try to keep up with more services. By comparison, FAST channels are easy to use because users don’t have to create an account, log in, or go through other hoops to start watching.
With the update, the Fire TV interface will now bring together all new and existing FAST content into one updated experience that provides access to a variety of categories such as News, Sports, Food & Cooking, Music Videos, Trailers, Gaming Videos, Comedy, and more, Maines notes.
The news category includes access to both national news coverage and more than 330 local news channels, including later this week, new FAST channels from NBC and Telemundo.
These category pages are accessible with just a click from the Fire TV “Free” tab, and Amazon says more categories are coming “coming soon.”
The update was announced as part of Amazon’s broader NewFronts presentation, which also included updates to your free streaming service Freevee – which offers its own FAST channels. But Freevee is accessible on all platforms, including mobile and other non-Amazon media players and TVs, while Fire TV channels are exclusive to Fire TV.
The company’s pitch to advertisers is that they can now directly target Fire TV’s customer base, which tends to include Prime subscribers and younger families, through Amazon DSPs. This allows Amazon to take advantage of the company’s broader advertising team and capabilities to sell ad space on the FAST channel on Fire TV.
Amazon notes that it has sold more than 200 million Fire TV devices worldwide and Amazon’s ad-supported streaming solutions now average 155 million unduplicated monthly viewers, or 6 in 10 US adults. .
The company also cited a customer success story where an automotive customer served native ads on Fire TV and Fire tablets that led to an 11% increase in brand awareness and a 14% increase in purchase intent. . Additionally, citing Nielsen data, Amazon said that 72% of its streaming TV viewers do not watch linear TV.
However, Amazon isn’t the only streamer offering FAST channels these days. The competitor Roku has more than 350 FAST channels on its platform starting in March. Google TV just announced over 800 FAST channelsand YouTube has been experimenting with them too. plexus, Discovery by Warner Bros., tubeand tv slingamong others, are also entering this market, historically led by services such as pluto tv.
The new Fire TV experience will roll out to customers this week, Amazon said. Customers will be able to find the new content tiles via the Fire TV home screen, as well as within the Fire TV “Free” tab. Later this summer, Fire TV will bring all the FAST categories together with the launch of an always-on Fire TV channel destination.
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