One week ago, Amazon launched a new video streaming service on the movie directory website IMDb, called ‘IMDb Freedive’. Not only does it allow users to watch free movies and TV shows , but it’s also reinvented the website to create a real estate for commercials to be watched with full attention by users across the globe.
While Amazon has already got its membership based Amazon Prime Video, one would think this old repository of movie cast information, trivia and curated movie lists would be a space with dated movies for people to enjoy – similar to free classic movies on YouTube like Legally Blonde, Princess Diaries, etc. However, IMDb Freedive has updated shows like ‘The Bachelor’ and ‘Fringe’ and feature movies like ‘Look Who’s Talking' and 'Memento’ that has opened up considerable ad inventory to sell brands.
Claiming to have 250,000,000+ unique visitors a month looking up information about 5,000,000+ movies and shows, IMDb now has a new reason to be visited. Users can now go to curated playlists made by their friends and family and watch the linked show/movie, rate them and give their opinions to help others make their own movie watching decisions.
"Customers already rely on IMDb to discover movies and TV shows and decide what to watch," said Col Needham, founder and CEO of IMDb. "With the launch of IMDb Freedive, they can now also watch full-length movies and TV shows on IMDb and all Amazon Fire TV devices for free. We will continue to enhance IMDb Freedive based on customer feedback and will soon make it available more widely, including on IMDb's leading mobile apps."
What is interesting, however, is the fact that the website will now have a plethora of additional data to collect from the visitors. As a Marketing Science student, I have already worked on IMDb’s free data, collecting information on individual movie ratings, genres, associated tags and related movies, and running a simple topic model analysis on the data set gives you a breakdown of exactly which movies have risen in popularity, the existing descriptive statistics of the movies to date, and the type of movies that typically do well.
The addition of tracked viewer data, the knowledge of seeing the approximate timing of each break in the movie, the quickness of the user to skip the ad, and closing and opening of new links would allow for the creation of a whole new recommendation system for movie directors to follow when deciding what cinematic venture to take on next.
There is a possibility to create a whole new agency of movie-related data, similar to Spotify’s iconic annual ‘Wrapped’ campaign that gives every user a yearly breakdown of their top favourites songs and artists, and statistics on how they ranked among others similar to them. And I, for one, hope this data is released for public use.
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