Amazon Video Increases Traffic Share

Usage of Amazon Video has increased in the past year as it went up to third place in terms of traffic in North America coming after Netflix and YouTube. The video service of Amazon accounted for 4.3 percent of all downstream internet traffic in North America during peak hours. This was revealed by Sandvine, a network equipment maker, through its bi-annual Global Internet Phenomena Report, which was released on Wednesday.

While its share is far behind the share of Netflix and YouTube, it was enough to allow it to increase its standing from eighth place to third place after around a year. Netflix has a total share of 35.2 percent of the traffic while YouTube has 17.5 percent.

Amazon was aggressive in competing with Netflix in the subscription video market. The Amazon Video is free for Amazon Prime Subscribers and has followed the original-content strategy of Netflix through its release of original content, like “Transparent.” It has also taken up some of the market left by Netflix by going after high-profile exclusives, like an agreement to stream original show from HBO.

Amazon Video Increases Traffic Share - image credit: wired.com

Offering Prime Video subscriptions also put Amazon on a good position to go up against Netflix in April. The subscriptions are offered at $8.99 per month for first-timers.

The lead of Netflix seemed to go down in a recent report after its 37.1 percent share around six months ago. The decline in the hare may have been due to the improved video compression of Netflix, according to Sandvine. The better video compression means subscribers can continue watching video marathons, but the streams are not much of a data burden on the network.

Sandvine also discovered that over 70 percent of mobile traffic was taken by Google and Facebook in Latin America. The figure is ten percent higher than a year ago. The addition of voice and video calling allowed WhatsApp and other communication apps to increase their traffic. WhatsApp has a 7.4 percent share in Latin America, which is a increase of threefold compared to two years ago.

Posted by George Daniels on Wednesday June 22 2016, 10:02 AM EDT. All trademarks acknowledged. Filed under Technology. Comments and Trackbacks closed. Follow responses: RSS 2.0