To achieve the greatest possible value within the possibilities Amazon Studios offers, Pablo Iacoviello, the platform’s director of Monetization, explained at MIP Cancun during the panel Disruptive and Emerging Digital Initiatives, that they are working on four pillars: licensing and distributing content by sharing rights on second and third windows; in co-productions (with those who have more experience, as is the case of Hernán and Diablo Guardián, among others); complement with the cinema window, and the fourth, the advertising vertical. “Additionally, we are exploring the options offered by the Amazon ecosystem, such as Twitch, Amazon Music, amazon.com” he commented.
Within the latter, he mentioned the experiment they conducted in the case of the content Daisy Jones & the Six, by offering on amazon.com a store that allows purchasing the look of each character. “There you find the image of the show and the clothes that match the ’70s style. We are going to start incorporating this into all our originals” he said.
The panel was also composed of Abel Tamayo, director of Business Development & Sales at Ole Broadcasting & Distribution; Daniel Padilla CEO of One Play and Julian Rodriguez Montero, Content Director at TVUP- TIVIFY. The panel was chaired by Nicolas Smirnoff.
“It resembles a Swiss knife, allowing any content to be brought to any platform” is the example Abel Tamayo gave when explaining how they started as a VOD, to expand to other options, such as including linear channels, among others.
Iacoviello commented that they have licensed over 30 contents in Latin America, including Argentina, 1985, Maradona, Spanish contents, and Mañana es Hoy, among others. “It is a super interesting model we are already working on. There, what we do is share second windows with someone, and Klaudia Bermúdez is working on that through the Amazon MGM Studios Distribution in Latin America sales team” he said.
Regarding the exploration of the cinema window, in addition to doing what they did in Argentina (with 1985, Blondi, Doble Discurso) they already started working to win other territories, such as Japan.
And in advertising, there is a great deal to be explored, he explained. He mentioned the case of what they did with River, where they worked with discounts for affiliates. “With the River t-shirt, what we did was an agreement in which we gave members access to Prime Video for a limited time and we did a whole marketing and awareness campaign through it” he explained.
Likewise, they are working with Telcos and cable operators,“ always looking for alliances that allow us to give more exposure to our content.” he furthered.
Daniel Padilla commented that, along with watching content, they are also trying to get the audience to experience content. “We want to take the content to those who cannot have it, either because they cannot acquire it or because their type of business is not linked to content distribution. That is why we bought a tech company, we license content and take premium content to people in different ways, we are in nine countries, with the condition that content travels, but always paying its expenses, because content should not cease to be paid for, but it should be paid in other ways” he said.
He mentioned that they worked on the film Gran Turismo, which they made together with an oil company and Sony, to place on gaming serving stations with the purpose of people competing to go to a car race in Argentina, which, in turn, is what happens in the film.