While text contents have their own consumers, images can speak a thousand words. On top of them, are videos.
With more people paying attention to videos on the internet, Amazon seeks to capitalize on the contents by launching its own video platform. Debuted on November 27th, 2017, Amazon is announcing a suite of five video processing tools as part of AWS Media Services, cloud-based tools to help build, service and monetize video streams.
The attempt started when Amazon acquired Portland startup Elemental Technologies in 2015, among others.
After being rebranded and later known as AWS Elemental, the Portland company is taking the next steps in online videos by utilizing Amazon's resources.
"When we were making decisions around the acquisition, this is what we envisioned," said Keith Wymbs, Elemental's chief marketing officer. "This was what customers told us they thought they were going to need in the future."
Usually, building targeted advertising around videos required the integration of third-party providers. And to boost web traffic, providers need to have the hardware to handle that traffic. Here is where Amazon wants to take its role: eliminating video providers' need for hardware by offloading their contents to AWS.
The five tools Amazon is offering, tap into Amazon's cloud computing network for creating and managing online video. They are:
- AWS Elemental MediaConvert: Converts and compresses video-on-demand for delivery.
- AWS Elemental MediaLive: Encode broadcast-grade live video for TV or connected devices.
- AWS Elemental MediaPackage: Preparing and protect live video streams with extra tools such as immediate playback.
- AWS Elemental MediaStore: The storage service for video.
- AWS Elemental MediaTailor: Allows publishers to monetize their videos with targeted and personalized advertising.
What this means, Amazon is putting itself in the competition against the likes of Google's YouTube. With the effort, it wants to work with media companies and video creators, so they can build and host streams on its ad-base video platform.
The announcement came when YouTube was struggling to police its contents, where negative videos were showing up.
AWS Elemental Media Services was announced, along with the company's push towards mixed reality with a platform called 'Sumerian'.
According to Alex Dunlap, GM at AWS Elemental:
"These companies spent a great deal of time, money, and focus operating infrastructure with resources that could have been better spent creating great content and viewer experiences. We built AWS Elemental Media Services to let customers focus on delivering top-quality video reliably to any device, everywhere, without the undifferentiated heavy lifting of managing infrastructure. This not only helps traditional video providers innovate faster, but it also opens up new opportunities for startups, government agencies, schools, and multinational enterprises that, before today, had limited access to premium-quality video technology."
Amazon said that early users using the new tools include BT, Pac-12 Networks, Amazon Prime Video, Fox Sports Australia, fuboTV, Nine, Spuul, M2A Media, Cinépolis, and IMAGICA.
