Amazon MX Player bets on shoppable videos to drive growth in India as competition intensifies

Amazon MX Player, the video streaming service, is betting on shoppable videos, which let viewers shop or add products to their cart while watching content, to ramp up its business amid rising competition in India's video streaming market.

The platform also plans to leverage Gen AI or generative artificial intelligence to help brands quickly create images and videos for their advertisements.

The integration of the Amazon ad stack is a game changer, said Karan Bedi, head, Amazon MX Player.

"Amazon has been in the ads business for a long time. They are one of the leaders in the business and they bring a very strong technology focus to that. So today we are able to create very relevant outcomes for brands and advertisers using the trillions of shopping signals (any online behaviour or action that indicates a potential customer is actively considering a purchase) that Amazon provides," he said.

In October, Amazon merged two ad-supported streaming services—Amazon miniTV and MX Player—into a single entity called Amazon MX Player to consolidate its presence in India, one of the world’s fastest-growing media and entertainment markets.

This was after Amazon acquired certain assets of MX Player, including its apps and select content from its library in June 2024. The combined service has over 250 million unique users in the country.

Bedi was was CEO of MX Player at the time it was acquired.

Amazon MX Player is a key part of the online retail giant’s strategy to boost its digital advertising revenue in the country. The biggest advantage is MX Player's strong integration with the Amazon ecosystem, said Aruna Daryanani, director, Amazon MX Player.

Streaming & shopping

"Amazon understands shopping the best. It is the largest online store in this country. We are able to generate trillions of shopping signals every year which our advertisers can use to tap the right audience for their product or service or their campaign," Daryanani  said.

She said these are first-party signals that are more accurate and reliable than the third-party signals other video services rely on. “This is an advantage that no video service can replicate,” she said.

She pointed out that no one watches ads with the same level of engagement as they do when watching a show or any content being streamed.

"You tend to switch off a bit while watching ads. Because of our integration with Amazon, the landing page of that particular product opens up below the video when the brand ad is playing,” Daryanani pointed out.

One can browse through the product details, its price points and features. They can add the product to their cart or wish list to purchase later, she said.

Then there are immersive ads. Daryanani gave an example of a jewellery ad in 3D format which, she said, left a lasting impression on the audience, resulting in a higher brand recall for the brand.

Daryanani claimed that viewer interaction with such interactive advertising formats is 6-7 times higher than other industry offerings.

The ad experience on television is being designed to be as browsable as it is on a mobile device..

"On TV, we have capabilities like showing a bit about the product when the ad is playing on the right side, then having a QR code capability if a customer wants to go directly on the landing page through phone," Daryanani said.

The platform’s shoppable and interactive ads will mean higher return on investment (ROI) for advertisers, said Karan Taurani, senior vice-president of Elara Capital.

Shoppable ads is a conversion-led model which boasts a high ROI for advertisers and is new, innovative and offers a high level of monetisation, he added.

AI-led ads

Another area of focus is AI. Amazon MX Player plans to roll out a Gen AI solution for brands to help them with image and video generation for their spots.

"If you're an advertiser that has typically not been on video, you will be able to quickly and seamlessly work with the product and create a video ad using generative AI capabilities," Bedi explained.

Daryanani said this will help a lot of brands that don't want to invest a significant amount of money in generating ads. “For instance, brands will be able to picture how a Bluetooth speaker near a swimming pool will look like. This will open up a huge segment of brands who don't have the capability to produce really high-quality ads," she said.

Over the past year, Alphabet, which owns Google, and Facebook parent Meta have also been increasingly incorporating Gen AI capabilities to their ad-serving products, helping brands create more personalised and engaging ads, and improve targeting to reach the right audiences, among others.

Rising video ads market

Digital video is the largest and the fastest-growing part of the country’s ad market, said Bedi.

"The digital ad market is around Rs 60,000 crore and the AVOD (advertising video on-demand) market is somewhere 35-40 percent. This includes YouTube, which has two-thirds of the AVOD market share, and the balance is split between other players," Taurani said.

The AVOD market size is around Rs 25,000 crore, which is 20-25 percent of India’s advertising expenditure at Rs 1.10 lakh crore. Top players in the space include YouTube, which makes Rs 14,000 crore, JioStar, which makes Rs 6,000-odd crore, and the remaining Rs 5,000 crore is spread across multiple players.

Girish Prabhu, head of of Amazon Ads India, said TV contributes 40 percent to India's ad market and digital is 55 percent, which he expects will move to 75-80 percent in the near future.

He noted that the penetration of Connected TV (CTV) is growing rapidly and as it increases, viewing behaviour will shift toward CTV and streaming apps

"When this happens, a couple of things will change. One is the budgets and the outcomes that brands are looking for will shift more and more to digital," he said.

Bedi echoed the sentiment: "Money from television moving to digital is now a reality. The users have moved, but the money is also moving now."

He added that they are planning to also enlist brands from sectors that are not e-commerce-first, like BFSI and auto.

Prabhu said that brands not currently selling on Amazon but who find the audience and the content on the platform relevant are now talking to the company about how digital can be relevant to them.

"We will go deeper with our existing large portfolio of brands that we already work with. We will also go deeper in terms of brands that are not selling on Amazon as our distribution is relevant to them," he said.

“There are brands that we have worked with in the past, but not so much recently because we didn't have an offering that would add value to them. But now, with the wide distribution that MX Player gives us, it becomes relevant to these brands,” Prabhu said.

Besides JioStar, which owns JioCinema and Disney+ Hotstar, two of India’s leading streaming platforms, the market also includes players such as Netflix, Zee5, Sony LIV and Apple TV+.

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