Kelly Day, Amazon Prime Video Vice President, International, outlined the company’s localisation efforts across Asia, Europe and Latin America in the first keynote session of APOS 2022, which is taking place virtually and as an in-person event in Singapore (September 27-29).
Amazon Prime Video launched its slate of originals in local languages and a localised user experience throughout Southeast Asia last month, instead of initially focusing on India and Japan. Day spoke from the U.S. and told APOS: “We try to be thoughtful in not only bringing all these amazing global series and tentpoles, but also doing it right locally, so we’ve got a brand new team just hired, based in Singapore. We’ve seen the response in Indonesia and the Philippines really strong right out of the gate.”
Amazon Prime in India has already achieved success with Hindi-language scripted series, including Paatal Lok, The Family Man Made in HeavenIt has user numbers that trail Disney+ Hotstar, but are higher than Netflix. Day stated that the next step will be to expand its presence in South India. This country has strong local industries, including Malayalam-language content, Telugu, Kannada, Kannada, and Tamil. Amazon Prime launched a new slate of 41 series and movies in April across various language segments.
“We view India as a region and not just one country, so we’re doing programming in ten different languages,”Day explained. “We have been offering and starting to develop more originals, not only in Hindi, but also many other local languages throughout India. We building out the team in the south to focus on those regions of India….we have extensive investment in local originals.”
She also mentioned that another important development in this price conscious market was the launch of mobile-only plans at a lower cost. “Our mobile-only tier has been hugely successful for us in partnership with mobile carriers in India, and we’ve started to introduce that in other regions, including Southeast Asia and Africa.”
Amazon Prime is expanding its content offerings in Japan. Japan has higher ARPUs and Amazon Prime continues to be the market leader. However, competitors are trying to catch up. Day stated that while Japanese anime is a significant driver in this market’s growth, Amazon is also having success with live-action scripted as well as unscripted content.
“We’ve made significant investment in original content in Japan as well. We’ve been quite successful in unscripted with [local versions of] The Bachelorette and the new season of The Masked Singer, but we’re also doing more with scripted content. Next month we’re launching the local version of Modern Love and YA dark comedy My Undead Girlfriend, which is a lot of fun.”
Day said that Japan is also a source for unscripted formats. DocumentalAround 16 countries have adapted comedy series.
Day also addressed the impact of the global inflation crisis and the cost of living on streaming. He confirmed that Amazon Freevee, an AVOD service, which is currently available in the U.S. and UK, would soon be expanded to other countries. MiniTV, Amazon’s AVOD-specific service, launched last January and offers exclusive content within its Amazon India app.
“We also offered a premium ad experience on Freevee for Thursday night football in the U.S. last week and we’re very pleased with the early results – there’s a great opportunity in live sports to introduce a unique premium ad experience,” Day continued. “There’s clearly more invention and evolution going on in the industry right now, with more SVODs offering a a variety of AVOD and freemium platforms.”