37% of Amazon Prime Members Have Not Used Amazon Video in the Past Year

About one year ago, there was a report that Amazon Prime had an estimated 63 million subscribers, having grown 17 million members over the year prior. On that growth trajectory, it’s probably safe to assume that number is closer to 75-85 million members now, and possibly even more.

This would put it pretty close to Netflix’s total subscriber numbers, which this year reached over 100 million streamers, putting Amazon in second place when it came to total subscribers.

But we were curious about how many of these Amazon Prime subscribers use Amazon’s streaming service. We polled 488 self-reporting Amazon Prime members and asked them when the last time they used Amazon Prime’s included Video streaming service.

Below are the results:

It appears the majority of people who subscribe to Amazon Prime do, in fact, use the streaming service with some frequency, but the 37% number was surprising, at least until we dug into some specific answers.

Several people who said they have never used Amazon’s video streaming service said they didn’t even know they had the option to stream through Amazon. While Amazon markets the service, it’s not obvious on the homepage, where product sales are prioritized. Especially for older audiences, the experience of trying to stream something on Amazon is too complicated.

A handful said they use Apple TV and are (still) waiting for the service to roll out on that platform, where rumors of such have been flying around for years. There is still no official word as to when, if ever, this will happen.

Others say the interface is just too counter-intuitive for daily use, especially when compared to Netflix and other easier-to-use services. This last one is the one that we would probably agree with the most. While using Amazon Video on a Roku, things are just a mess, it’s really hard to find any of the available titles outside of a select few listed on the homepage, and the sorting algorithms are definitely not as intuitive as other services.

But this all raises the question. Does it matter? Amazon Video started as a sideshow in order to attract more Prime subscribers interested in two-day shipping, which has shown to drastically increase Amazon usage. Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, definitely has Netflix in his sights, as he has been putting immense pressure on Amazon Video to make him a ‘Game of Thrones” in order to drive more viewership, and thus Prime subscribers to the service. The recent announcement that Amazon has signed a deal to produce a ‘Lord of the Rings’ makes it pretty obvious that Video subscribers is the goal here. This likely suggests data that proves video subscribers are more active Amazon shoppers.

All part of Amazon’s plan to take over the world, including TV and movies.