Crackle and Yidio finish ahead of Amazon on non-branded searches
Search marketing intelligence company, AdGooroo (part of Kantar Media) released some interesting findings on paid searches of streaming video services. They released the findings following Amazon’s announcement in April that it would offer a standalone monthly video subscription to compete directly with Netflix, Hulu and others. How had the competitors fared on search terms in the following 90 days?
Amazon finished third. And the first two spots were not occupied by Netflix or Hulu, but instead were taken by Crackle and Yidio which finished first and second respectively. Crackle is a Sony brand, which offers, among other things, ‘Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.’ Yidio is the popular video streaming aggregator. AdGooroo looked at 57 non-branded streaming video keywords from March 9 through June 6, including the terms ‘streaming movies’, ‘free movie streaming’ and ‘online movies’.
According to AdGooroo, the issue with Amazon was not a lack of spending. The issue was inefficiency. In fact, Amazon actually spent the most, paying (according to estimates) $83,000 to sponsor the keywords. In comparison, it was estimated that Crackle spent $38,000, while Yidio spent just $33,000. The numbers suggest that Amazon’s $2.00 cost per click (CPC) dwarfed the CPC for both Yidio and Crackle.
However, the statistics aren’t all bad for Amazon. The site dominated on searches for its own, Amazon Prime brand name. During the same 90 day period, it generated 4.3 million clicks while rivals, Netflix and Hulu generated 600,000 and 354,000 clicks respectively for their subscription services. According to AdGooroo, part of that may have to do with Amazon’s multi-tiered services, “demonstrating that the online retail giant already has a significant advantage based on the popularity of its overall Amazon Prime service.”
Both Crackle (200,000 clicks) and Yidio (87,000 clicks) have a long way to go. I suppose that when your market cap is nearly $300 billion, a few lost dollars on paid search is nothing to cry over.
You can see the full findings here.
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