The Next Big Ad War: Netflix vs. Hulu vs. Amazon
We’ve had beer wars, cola wars and, for those who remember, the legendary Macy’s versus Gimbels rivalry. Right now cellphone marketers are exchanging blow after blow. So who are the next combatants from the school of Coke and Pepsi, or Apple and Samsung?
You can expect a lot more head-to-head ad spending from Netflix, Amazon and Hulu.
So far the ascendant streaming services haven’t waged much of an ad war, but that seems likely to change. The subscriber counts and video content of all three are continually growing by leaps and bounds, increasing their competition, costs and potential rewards at a rapid pace. Netflix, which offered about 1,000 movies and TV episodes when it began streaming videos in 2007, now has thousands more for its 29 million US subscribers. Just last week it signed a deal with the Weinstein Co. for exclusive rights to its movies starting in 2016, a pact Harvey Weinstein called “probably the biggest” in the company’s history. One media analyst estimated the cost to Netflix at $30 million — per year.
