Amazon boosts Freevee content catalog and is the latest company to lean into ad-supported video streaming content popularity
As reported by The Hollywood Reporter recently, Amazon is moving 100 TV series and movies from its Prime Video SVOD service to its FAST video streaming service called "Amazon Freevee," including Wheel of Time, Lizzo’s Watch Out for the Big Grrrls, Modern Love and Reacher.
In doing so, it is the latest company that is leaning into the increasing popularity of FAST "Free ad-supported television" video streaming services. Earlier this month, Deadline reported on Paramount Global's decision to offer full seasons of popular shows like RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars, iCarly and Mike Judge’s Beavis & But-Head on their FAST platform Pluto TV in the month before their new seasons premiere on Paramount+.
This can be seen as a wider shift towards ad-supported content. FAST streaming services had a penetration rate of 58% in 2022 (p. 7) in the United States, which is up 18% from its penetration rate in 2020. And this growth is expected to continue; S&P Global Market Intelligence projects that the FAST business in the United States will grow from the 4 billion USD range in 2022 to almost 9 billion USD by 2026.
However, the growth of the FAST business also points to a wider trend that can be observed in our current media landscape. In the past few months, Disney and Netflix have each introduced ad-supported tiers in addition to the ad-free subscription options on their respective video streaming services as well. When put together, we can spot a clear shift towards ad-supported content, of which the expansion of the Amazon Freevee content catalog is merely the most recent example.
Indeed, a Statista study from 2022 that looked into the share of the population that prefers low cost streaming versus high cost streaming without ads across 15 countries showed that a higher share preferred low cost streaming with ads than without ads in every single one of those 15 countries. So it seems ad-supported content is here to stay.
Globally, the majority of consumers express a preference for low-cost ad-supported video streaming platforms over higher cost platforms with
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