Amazon Brings Live Shopping to Streaming TV
Amazon is expanding the reach of its Amazon Live shopping content with the debut of a new interactive shoppable channel on the Prime Video and Freevee streaming TV services.
The HSN-style, free ad-supported TV (FAST) channel will give consumers expanded access to the content and creators of Amazon Live, which debuted in 2016 on desktop, mobile and Amazon’s Fire TV devices. In 2023, more than 1 billion customers in the U.S. and India watched Amazon Live streams across those devices, according to Amazon. Now, the new Amazon Live FAST channel aims to blend the experience of a shoppable social feed with streaming TV via 24/7 programming.
The new channel also will feature Amazon’s “Shop the Show” technology, which enables customers to more seamlessly browse, shop and engage with the content they’re watching on the TV screen by using their mobile device. Customers watching the new FAST channel on their TV can open the Amazon Shopping app on their phone and type “shop the show” into the search bar to be directed to a shopping carousel highlighting the featured products they see on TV in real time.
The new Amazon Live channel on Prime Video and Freevee will feature customers’ favorite content from Amazon Live, including creators and brands like Ashley Iaconetti and Jared Haibon, Rachel Clark, Madison LeCroy, Haley Kalil, Tastemade, The Bump and more. Amazon Live also is collaborating with creators to develop new content made for the TV screen, including a new original show with Paige DeSorbo that will launch on the Amazon Live FAST Channel this June.
U.S. viewers can access the channel by navigating to the “Live TV” tab on Prime Video, Fire TV or through the Freevee app, and the programming remains available at Amazon.com/live for desktop and mobile devices.
“We are excited to bring customers more ways to shop with their favorite Amazon Live creators and brands on our premium streaming services,” said Wayne Purboo, VP of Amazon Shopping Videos in a statement. “With the new Amazon Live FAST Channel on Prime Video and Freevee, we’re making shoppable entertainment more accessible, interactive and engaging than ever before.”
The move represents an interesting return to a more traditional format for home shopping, one that had been eschewed by many companies in recent years in favor of newer video platforms — in particular social media. For example, Qurate Retail Group — parent company of legacy home shopping brands QVC and HSN — has been working to expand its content beyond TV and into a range of apps and social platforms.
However, Amazon’s move from a social media-style setting back into television is a sign of the preferences of U.S. consumers, who have always liked live video shopping via their televisions — but are less likely than their Asian counterparts to want to do it at length on mobile devices and social platforms. And as with Amazon’s Prime Video shoppable advertising push, the ecommerce juggernaut has an advantage in this realm being as the company is, well, an ecommerce juggernaut (that is, the commerce part of the equation is already figured out).
