Amazon's Twitch Gaming Channel Is Exaggerating Its Popularity (bloomberg.com) 24
Comparatively few people follow the Crown channel or participate in its chats -- suggesting they aren't engaging with the programming. From a report: When Amazon launched the Crown Channel on its livestreaming platform Twitch in 2019, the e-commerce giant was looking to flex its entertainment chops in the buzzy world of video games -- an arena the company had been trying to break into for years. Resembling a traditional television network, Crown offers a range of ad-supported original programming, including "Screen Invaders!," a show about mobile gaming. Amazon says Crown is among Twitch's top 10 entertainment channels, luring tens of thousands of viewers -- a feat typically equaled only by Twitch's top personalities -- and is attracting such big-name advertisers as chipmaker Intel and insurer Progressive. But a Bloomberg analysis of Crown audience metrics shows the channel isn't as popular as Amazon says it is. That has potential implications for brands, which according to internal documents, may have paid anywhere from $150,000 to $500,000-plus to promote themselves on the channel.
A pitch deck for advertisers from January 2022 said the Crown channel then reached 43 million viewers and had a "highly engaged audience." But most of the viewers Crown cites are what the advertising industry calls "junk views," people who aren't actively watching the programming. Although Crown appears to draw in thousands of viewers each livestream, comparatively few people follow the channel or participate in its chats -- suggesting they aren't engaging with the content. Amazon sometimes pays Twitch tens of thousands of dollars to promote Crown programs on the site's home page, where they end up in a digital carousel that viewers scroll through, typically zipping past shows until they find something they want to watch. Audience inflation has been a long-standing issue for video and social-media sites.
A pitch deck for advertisers from January 2022 said the Crown channel then reached 43 million viewers and had a "highly engaged audience." But most of the viewers Crown cites are what the advertising industry calls "junk views," people who aren't actively watching the programming. Although Crown appears to draw in thousands of viewers each livestream, comparatively few people follow the channel or participate in its chats -- suggesting they aren't engaging with the content. Amazon sometimes pays Twitch tens of thousands of dollars to promote Crown programs on the site's home page, where they end up in a digital carousel that viewers scroll through, typically zipping past shows until they find something they want to watch. Audience inflation has been a long-standing issue for video and social-media sites.
Self-inficted damage (Score:5, Insightful)
All modern companies have unrealistic expectations of continuous, uncapped growth and forced innovation these days. Partly due to the unhealthy need to continuously satisfy investors. Well, guess what? The world doesn't work like that. Why can't you just build something good, say "that's good enough" and let it stay good forever?
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Nice FP. Let me try to answer:
Because it's a fake problem. There is no profit that is big enough to solve the problem of needing more profit. (Perhaps the key to recognizing a malignant corporate cancer?)
As regards this story, I'm kind of surprised Bezos (or Son of Sam Bezos?) isn't pushing harder on this angle. Exploiting addictive behaviors is so ON BRAND for Amazon and eagerly self-addicted gamers are some of the best suckers out there.
Funny story time. I'm an addict, too. (And I'd bet you are also.) My
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if Amazon gets its way, I will be faced with the choice of buy from Amazon or starve.
Not likely, the grocery market is huge and has a number of major players in it (though by far not as many as there are supermarket chains - most of the big players run several brands in the same market, often competing with each other).
Amazon captured the online market because it had the delivery process down when others were still trying to understand how this new world works. In grocery stores, that's the other way around.
And these days, you have plenty of choice online if you're a bit not lazy and spend
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I think you are failing to understand the scope of the problem.
I'll start with your final paragraph first, because it's easier. Do you understand the difference between a monopsony and a monopoly? Simple example is books, where only bestsellers are profitable and no publisher can have a bestseller without Amazon's active support. (However, I admit that I don't see how Amazon could apply this strategy directly to the games of the original story.)
The grocery store topic is much more complicated and I think it
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You seem to ignore history. Amazon was doing the books market in long before they had a dominant position. By the time other book sellers went online and offered a comparable market place, it was all said and done. In my country, the two largest online book stores now - one of which is the largest brick-and-mortar book store company - both came when Amazon had already taken the market and their online stores were terrible from a user perspective.
Amazon did everything right, and their competitors did everyth
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Don't know which country you're talking about, though I might guess Germany. Or maybe France? I recently heard about an anti-Amazon law in France...
Mostly disagree with you regarding the substance based on my knowledge of the States and Japan. For example, I think the main thing Bezos did right was gamble with other people's money and essentially ignore the profits until he was sure he had dominated that niche. Then he started metastasizing like a cancer, looking for other niches to dominate.
I don't know if
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Don't know which country you're talking about, though I might guess Germany. Or maybe France? I recently heard about an anti-Amazon law in France...
Germany. No anti-Amazon law here, but we used to have plenty of cool book stores.
I think the main thing Bezos did right was gamble with other people's money and essentially ignore the profits until he was sure he had dominated that niche. Then he started metastasizing like a cancer, looking for other niches to dominate.
From what I've heard from people close to Bezos, he always wanted to "sell everything". He picked books to start with for the reasons I already mentioned.
I don't know if Amazon can dominate the gaming niche.
Steam has that cornered. Amazon might try to buy Steam, though.
For most household goods, though, Amazon became synonymous with online shopping the way Google became synonymous with online search.
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Still some disagreements, but my main point is that your concluding paragraph is exactly the main thing is wrong. No company should become synonymous with any market niche.
Historical note: IBM used to play that game by using generic terms as product labels. Really hard to compare products when the leading brand basically eclipses generic discussion. (Which is also why I refuse to use "google" as a verb, even though "websearch" is a cumbersome way to distinguish from generic search.)
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Still some disagreements, but my main point is that your concluding paragraph is exactly the main thing is wrong. No company should become synonymous with any market niche.
I do agree that is wrong. Pretty much everyone in the field of economics agrees as well. We have anti-trust laws for a reason.
It's just that reality sometimes leads to it happening.
Historical note: IBM used to play that game by using generic terms as product labels.
Everyone does that now. Microsoft Word, Apple Numbers, etc. But yes. It also works the other way around. Over here, "Tempo" is a synonym for paper tissues. It's the name of the most successful brand, which was so successful that it BECAME a synonym - the way "to google" became a synonym for "to search".
These are realities. We mus
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And "Colgate" means "toothpaste" in the Philippines.
Also important is that the definition of "monopoly" has been so creatively redefined, at least within American law. We have been Borked, and how!
But maybe you can tell me what's wrong with this generalized solution approach?
I don't have a good tag for it, but the "generic" description is progressive profits taxation based on market share. I've been playing with "pro-freedom anti-greedom" taxation, but that label seems too strained, even for me.
Rather than
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But maybe you can tell me what's wrong with this generalized solution approach?
Can it be gamed? If so, it will.
Never forget that our government recycles laws from the scrap pile and fiddles them around, changing the words mostly to satisfy various political purposes. Meanwhile, multi-national corporations spend millions on specialized tax lawyers to find loopholes and grey areas. It's an unfair battle.
progressive profits taxation based on market share.
I'm sure the various big names have no issue finding a corporate structure that avoids your tax. You know, Apple now is Apple Brand Inc. - which sells only the name that the 25 Apple Pho
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Sounds like you need to learn about Godel and Turing and friends. I still recommend Godel, Escher, Bach as one of the best books I've ever read, though I didn't read it until a couple of decades after it was published. However the same ideas keep coming up in various books... We keep adding layers of complexity that make various solutions more possible. The world is all about incompleteness and every system can and presumably will be gamed, but the new system can be fixed or improved, too. There are no fu
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I still recommend Godel, Escher, Bach
Yes, I still remember it despite it's been 20 years since I read it. Good book.
The world is all about incompleteness and every system can and presumably will be gamed, but the new system can be fixed or improved, too.
This is where we techies can learn from the lawyers, and I am happy to have worked closely with lawyers for the better part of a decade (even got some law training myself). Lawyers deal with incomplete and imprecise reality all the time. Techies think binary, lawyers think analog. They are great at building systems that are hard to game (I don't want to say impossible, but close enough that it's just some real corner cases). They
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I'm NOT saying we can get there from here, but I think that is because those tax laws you referenced have mostly been written by or on behalf of players trying to boost their own winnings. They are "investing" in government because the RoI is high. Actually, some of your reasoning sounds like it's been tainted by too many dealings with the lawyers. Don't forget that they aren't paid to worry about what is right and wrong, but just to make their clients look right as defined by those broken laws.
Government o
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Actually, some of your reasoning sounds like it's been tainted by too many dealings with the lawyers. Don't forget that they aren't paid to worry about what is right and wrong, but just to make their clients look right as defined by those broken laws.
I've dealt with lawyers enough to see the humans hidden deep inside. They're not all shitty assholes. But some are.
Yes, government, laws, the rich - all that and more, but we're leaving the subject.
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Basically feel like I've said my piece, but on the topic of lawyers, I think the best definition of a successful lawyer is "a lawyer who can pick his clients".
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Well, there are still people that are primarily interested in offering a good product long-term. These are mainly small companies and some larger family-owned ones. While without them everything would likely collapse, modern "management" sees them as a historic aberration, because profit is not placed above everything else.
Amazon is cheating and lying about their numbers? (Score:1)
I'm shocked!
Well... not that shocked.
Entirely unsurprised actually.
We're talking about a site infested with chinese knockoff products [youtube.com], faked reviews [wired.com] and other blatant tricks [buzzfeednews.com] (like changing a page to a completely different product so that something looks like it has a ton of reviews) after all.
Not engaged? (Score:2)
What would they like those handful of people watching this channel to do when the programming says it all? Isn't that the point of the program, to inform people?
As for "junk views", how many people on here have turned on a show or movie and zoned out? We've all done it. Not sure why Amazon thinks it should any different.
There are only a few ways to get people "engaged" and that usually revolves around sex. Unless the pe
Faking/Exaggerating Viewers is Easy (Score:3)
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