Is Freevee Doomed, YouTube Goes to 11
1. Is Freevee Doomed?
Reports that Amazon had branded its Freevee channels on Fire TV as “Prime Video Channels” fueled speculation that Amazon was about to sunset the oft-renamed service, whose purpose has always been a cipher.
We don’t think that is the case, at least not fully, because Amazon’s Fire TV division seems to operate separately from its Prime Video division, at least for now. And while each is now largely ad-supported, Amazon would still seem to have a strong interest in keeping them separate.
That (I think) is because Amazon still has hopes for Fire TV the Operating System to become a major player, if not in the US, then in Europe and, eventually, the rest of the known world.
But to understand what is happening, it is important to understand Freevee and Amazon’s amazingly complex ecosystem.
Why It Matters
Freevee was initially launched in January 2019 as “Freedive” and then became “IMDbTV” that June, as Amazon attempted to create greater relevance for the (somewhat) newly purchased IMDb website. In April 2022, the service was rebranded yet again to “Freevee,” a cringey portmanteau of “free” and “TV”.
The actual purpose of the service was never clear, as Amazon did next to nothing to promote it and few consumers were aware of its existence.
(I mean it was clear they were using it as a way to test out their ad product, but its value proposition to consumers was never clear.)
The line between Freevee and Prime Video was never actually clear either. When searching for a show on the Prime app, the results would often feature options to rent the show from Prime or “watch for free with ads on Freevee.” Which few consumers understood to be a separate and distinct service with its own standalone app.
The one place Freevee did seem to find a home was on the Fire TV OS.
Here’s where things get tricky.
Like LG, VIZIO, Samsung, Roku and Google, the Fire TV OS, which powers Fire TV sticks and Amazon-branded TV sets, comes with its own preinstalled array of free TV programming that is separate from what is available via Amazon Prime.
And by “separate” I mostly mean it lives in a distinct and separate part of the Fire TV interface, not that there is not significant overlap between the two.
Fire TV has been in front of the pack in terms of getting local news content on the Fire TV OS portion of its interface and has done a good job of promoting that to viewers.
So there’s all that and then there’s the fact that while the number of people using the Fire TV OS who do not have a Prime video subscription is miniscule, they likely watch Prime Video as often as everyone else, which is to say not very much.
Which makes it a smart move on Amazon’s part to also offer advertisers the opportunity to hit viewers when they are on the Fire TV OS home screen rather than just when they are on Prime Video, given that the former is going to be a much larger number.
Which would lead us to conclude that while the name “Freevee” may indeed be on the road to being sunset, the content play—free ad-supported programming that lives on the Fire TV OS is not.
Branding it “Prime Video” likely makes it easier for Amazon to sell their ad play to advertisers. They can tell them that ads on Prime Video reach viewers on the Amazon Prime Video app as well as viewers on the Fire TV OS. It’s one less brand name to throw at ad buyers and makes for more streamlined infographics in their pitch decks.
As for the Freevee app itself, it’s hard to know. Amazon might keep it out there as a way to lure people into subscribing to Prime Video, filling it with ads for the various sporting events it now has rights to.
Or they may let it wither on the vine, not updating it, but not actually shutting it down on the theory that spending money to publicize the service’s demise would not yield any sort of positive ROI.
We’ll have to keep an eye on that one for you.
What You Need To Do About It
If you’re Amazon, having the Fire TV FAST service is a smart idea, especially as it will allow you to both expand the base of your advertising and to promote all those NFL and NBA games. Just make sure that you communicate what’s going on to those Freevee fans who use the app—it can just be a screen that pops up when they log on—as that will allow you to continue to create good will with that cohort, small as it may be.
If you are the rest of the industry, be aware that Amazon is now the dominant powerhouse in ad-supported streaming, a title they are likely to maintain for the near future. Everyone else, Hulu excepted, has a whole lot of catching up to do in terms of signing up ad-supported subscribers to services that most consumers view as being modern versions of HBO and Showtime, places to watch movies and shows without any commercial breaks.
Meaning it’s not going to be easy.
In that vein, here’s a freebie from me: if there was a service that allowed viewers to watch original series without ads but reruns with ads, I suspect it would be popular with consumers. It would, of course, be a much tougher sell to advertisers who want their ads running against new original series, not reruns, but the number of people you’d sign up might make it worthwhile.
Think about it.
2. YouTube Goes To 11
So YouTube is now officially bigger than Disney. At least according to Nielsen’s The Gauge, which has the service getting 10.4% of all TV viewership (or viewership on a TV set, to be exact.)
This is more than the 9.9% attributed to all of Disney’s streaming and linear properties combined.
So quite the win for Alphabet.
Or is it?
While YouTube does offer a wide range of viewing options, many of which do count as “TV,” much of what is on there does not count as “TV.” At least in the minds of the viewers.
Who are, ultimately, the source we need to rely on.
Why It Matters
YouTube has a wide range of video content. Everything from movies (both rentable and pirated) to TV series to what we’ve been calling “Pro-Am” — web series created by actors, directors and writers who have spent years working on traditional TV who have turned to YouTube for the creative freedom they feel it offers. The episodes are close enough to the 22-minute length of a typical sitcom episode for audiences not to notice.
So there’s that, but then there are all those one to five minute videos. Videos that often explain something fairly pedestrian—how to fix the straw on a particular water bottle, the three best things to do in a popular tourist destination, a review of a DTC anti-aging pill.
I don’t think viewers see those as “TV” as much as “a web video I am watching on my TV because the screen is much, much bigger.”
As such, the appearance of an ad, even one that is skippable after a few seconds, is annoying AF to most viewers given that they only want to watch a 90 second video.
Sure it’s skippable, but that still means finding the remote and figuring out where exactly they need to click to skip the ad.
Just another in a long line of steps to get to the video.
There’s often a disconnect between the placement of ads and the type of video in question. Meaning that someone watching a follow-along yoga video may suddenly see a commercial pop up in the middle of Down Dog.
Not a very namaste moment.
This is why the VAB and the big media companies are so insistent that YouTube is not “really” TV.
And why I think we need to make YouTube its own category. Or, better still, create a taxonomy for the different types of content on there and count them separately, with TV-like content in one bucket and short-form in another.
Easier said than done, of course, because identifying what goes where is never going to be easy. But necessary if we are ever going to integrate YouTube into the greater TV ecosystem.
What You Need To Do About It
If you are YouTube, you need to proactively sort your content in a way that makes it easy to buy it on an apples-to-apple basis with the rest of the streaming TV ecosystem. You probably don’t see a compelling reason for this—you’re big enough and enough brands want to be on YouTube for this not to matter much. Not at first glance, anyway. But if you want to grow your ad business to its full potential, at least on TV, it’s a step I think you’ll need to take.
If you are the rest of the industry, you need to let YouTube know that there is a path for them to be part of the greater TV ecosystem. Because the longer you take steps to ensure they stay outside it, the more ad dollars are going to stop flowing your way. It’s always going to be smarter to embrace Google than to reject them.
Everybody wins.
If you are everyone else, just grab your popcorn. This one is going to take a while to play out.
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