Amazon Prime Video takes a dig at Netflix StreamFest, touts its 30-day free trial

Amazon Prime Video, the video-on-demand streaming service from Amazon couldn’t understand the fuss around two-day free streaming on 5th and 6th December 2020. After all, it offers a 30-day free trial.

So, on 5 December 2020, the streaming giant released a 37-second ad called ‘No Fest, Just Facts’ and the YouTube ad description read: “Free streaming of unlimited blockbuster entertainment, TV shows, Amazon Originals and premium movies for not just 2 but 30 complete days!”

It’s a hilarious dig at its rival which had announced this two-day free streaming period calling it StremFest with aplomb. It not only got celebs such as Yami Gautam, Anil Kapoor, Nawazuddin Siddiqui to promote it but even released two ads where YouTube and Instagram influencers dissed the StreamFest while simultaneously promoting it.

It was on 20 October 2020 during Netflix’s third-quarter announcements that Gregory K. Peters, Netflix’s COO and chief product officer said, “… we think that giving everyone in a country access to Netflix for free for a weekend could be a great way to expose a bunch of new people to the amazing stories that we have, the service, how the service works, really create an event, and hopefully get a bunch of those folks to sign up. So, we're going to try that in India, and we'll see how that goes.”

Netflix is facing a tough season right now: It missed its subscription forecast of 2.5 million and gained only 2.2 million new subscribers in Q3. It had added 10.1 million subscribers in Q2 and 15.8 million in Q1.

It will be interesting to see how Netflix responds to Amazon Prime Video.