This article covers requirements to deliver content under the Prime Video Pay-for-Performance royalty program. This applies only to Managed Contract partners who have been invited to join Prime Video’s Pay-for-Performance licensing model. If you are a Self-Publishing Contract partner, please refer to the Self-Publishing Contract Partners business overview for more information.
Under Pay-for-Performance royalty terms, content partners may make their titles available in either of the following royalty models:
- Prime (SVOD). You will be paid based on customer engagement on a Cost Per Hour (CPH) royalty model.
- Ad-supported (AVOD). You will be paid based on an advertising revenue share (Revshare) royalty model.
Prime Video doesn’t pay any minimum or up-front fees for content availed under CPH or Revshare terms. Content providers choose which titles they want to avail under the CPH royalty model. They should engage with their Amazon point of contact to discuss titles that can be availed under the Revshare royalty model.
Access Pay-for-Performance terms
Content partners can participate in the Prime Video Pay-for-Performance royalty program at the discretion of the Prime Video business team. To request participation, contact your Prime Video Content Acquisition Manager.
When your account is enabled, you’re prompted to review and accept Pay-for-Performance terms. These are linked from the banner that appears in the Prime Video Slate portal. Contractual terms detail how you earn royalties on your titles. You’re required to provide bank, payment, and tax details through the Prime Video Slate portal to enable royalty payments for titles availed under Pay-for-Performance.
After you accept the contractual terms and provide payment details, you may begin making your content available under Pay-for-Performance terms using industry-standard EMA Avails. Prime Video rejects CPH and/or Revshare avails if you haven’t accepted Pay-for-Performance terms through your Prime Video Slate account.
Submit Pay-for-Performance avails
To make titles available under CPH terms, you must submit EMA Avails with the following CPH SVOD or Revshare AVOD fields and inputs.
EMA Avails (v1.6)
EMA Avail field | SVOD CPH | Revshare AVOD |
---|---|---|
LicenseType | SVOD | SVOD |
LicenseRightsDescription | Prime | freewithads |
ContractID | CPH | revshare |
EMA Avails (v1.7.3)
EMA Avail field | SVOD CPH | Revshare AVOD |
---|---|---|
LicenseType | SVOD | SVOD |
GroupIdentity | Prime | freewithads |
ContractID | CPH | revshare |
Complete your avail sheet with all other necessary inputs per Amazon requirements, including the territory or territories into which you want to make content available. To learn more about Prime Video requirements for delivering EMA avails, see Content rights.
Note: AVOD is only available in select territories.
To ensure that new rights windows are captured by Prime Video operational workflows, deliver your avails in accordance with standard avail delivery SLAs, with a forward-looking date and timestamp in the Start field. Only submit avails for territories supported by your Pay-for-Performance (CPH or Revshare) agreement with Amazon — we won’t accept avail scopes for territories outside this agreement. Some territories, like India, require an additional agreement with Prime Video to avail your titles under Pay-for-Performance terms. Contact your Prime Video Content Acquisition Manager for more information about which territories you’re permitted to make your titles available in, under Pay-for-Performance terms.
Pay-for-Performance avails must not conflict with any existing Licensed SVOD/AVOD deal you have with Amazon. If you want to extend the availability window of your Licensed SVOD/AVOD titles under CPH/Revshare terms upon the expiration of the Licensed window, you must ensure that the CPH/Revshare Start and End date inputs specified in your delivered avail sheet don’t conflict with the windows of your Licensed titles. For a licensed SVOD/AVOD deal to maintain a continuous offer window, the End date and timestamp of the licensed SVOD/AVOD titles must be one minute before the CPH/reshare AVOD Start timestamp. If you’re uncertain about precise window dates of existing licensed titles, contact your Prime Video Partner Operations Manager.
If your Pay-for-Performance avails are rejected (for example, if there’s a conflict with a licensed deal or for a territory you’re not permitted to avail into for Pay-for-Performance), then you will receive instant feedback in the Deliveries tab within the Prime Video Slate portal.
You can use the following sample files to create EMA avails specifically for CPH SVOD. For details, see Content rights.
- EMA Avails v1.7.3 CPH SVOD sample file
- EMA Avails v1.6 CPH SVOD sample file
- EMA Avails v1.7.3 Revshare AVOD sample file
- EMA Avails v1.6 Revshare AVOD sample file
Note: Avails 1.6 doesn’t support Same Week Production (SWP) or Same Day Production (SDP) Pay-for-Performance content. If you plan to deliver SWP or SDP titles and stream them as Pay-for-Performance, please use Avails 1.7.3 and input either SWP or SDP in the LicenseRightsDescription field. Review LicenseRightsDescription on the TV Data Dictionary tab in the avails sample file for the usage of this field. For more information about these content types, see Service Level Agreements (SLAs).
Content fulfillment for CPH titles
After you successfully deliver Pay-for-Performance avails, title fulfillment requirements populate on the Avails tab within the Catalog Manager in your Prime Video Slate portal. For titles previously delivered to Prime Video through a different business line (like TVOD, Licensed SVOD, or Prime Channels), you probably won’t have additional delivery requirements after avail delivery. For net new titles to the service, or if you delivered avails for a territory that has an additional localization requirement, the Avails tab displays all new requirements. To identify new delivery obligations for your CPH/Revshare titles, filter Business Line to Prime/AVOD and Status to both Open and Required.
Note: You must provide localized audio or captions for each published territory. For example, if you’re publishing to Spain under Pay-for-Performance terms, you must provide Spanish audio or Spanish captions.
Reporting
After titles are available in Pay-for-Performance, you can track their performance through downloadable reports, available on the Reports tab in the Prime Video Slate portal. Performance reports—published daily, weekly, and monthly—include total minutes streamed per title and per territory. You can also access your earnings and related payments for those titles. The monthly earnings report includes royalties on a per-title, per-territory basis. A monthly payments report tracks each payment made to you for Pay-for-Performance earnings.
Royalty terms
For any title made available under Pay-for-Performance terms, you’re compensated based on performance of the titles.
CPH SVOD
For CPH SVOD, compensation is based on a per-hour royalty rate. CPH SVOD royalties are paid according to the rate card outlined in the CPH Digital License Agreement accepted through Prime Video Slate. Unless otherwise stated in your CPH agreement, royalties for titles published in the United States are paid in accordance with the Customer Engagement Ranking associated with each title streamed.
The Customer Engagement Ranking is a percentile ranking of a title’s level of engagement with our Prime customers in relation to other titles published into SVOD under CPH terms in a territory. Royalty rates for titles published in the United Kingdom, Germany, and Austria are paid based on aggregate hours streamed in each territory, according to the rate table available in your CPH Digital License Agreement. Titles published in all other territories earn a fixed royalty rate per hour, set forth in your CPH Digital License Agreement. Title streaming time begins accruing when the title is streamed for the first time by a customer.
CPH Earnings Report
View a breakdown of royalties per territory and offer type. This report can be exported at the monthly level and displays duration streamed in hours.
CPH Payments Report
View payments per sales period and marketplace. We issue payments approximately 90 days after the end of the month in which the revenue event occurred.
CPH Performance Metrics Report
Track minutes and unique streams for one or all your titles.
Exporting reports
Payment is based on earnings, and earnings are based on Performance Metrics. Make sure to align the payment report with the corresponding earnings report and invoices.
Note: You might notice a difference between the streaming minutes shown in the Performance Metrics section of your Dashboard and the streaming hours shown in the Earnings section. After converting minutes to hours or vice versa, differences between these two figures might be caused by the following reasons:
- When customers watch your video offline (for example, by downloading it to a Kindle Fire device), that device will not report the streaming activity until it reconnects to the Internet.
In the Performance Metrics section, this streaming activity will be attributed to the same day the customer streamed your video.
In the Earnings section, this streaming activity is accounted for in the month in which it is reported by the device. This ensures we pay you for all streaming activity, even if the streaming activity is reported after the month in which it occurred has ended. - You might have reached a payment cap under your SVOD CPH License Agreement with Amazon. These caps are reflected in the Earnings section of your Dashboard. Please refer to the SVOD CPH License Agreement for details.
- Streaming minutes are reported in the Performance Metrics section within five business days of the streaming event. However, if the streaming event is at the end of the month (such as January 31), the streams might be shown in the following month’s Earnings report.
Revshare AVOD
For Revshare AVOD, compensation is based on the share of the advertising revenue earned from the ads played on the content. Unless otherwise stated in your agreement, royalties for titles published are paid in accordance with the percentage share of the earned advertising revenue for each title.