Amazon’s newest feature for Prime Video is trying to make real life more like TV by letting you immediately buy what your favorite actors are wearing—or something similar.
The company on Thursday announced a new feature called Shop the Scene that will let users shop for products featured in a show or movie. With minimal interruption to the viewing experience, users can pull up items on the Amazon Shopping app inspired by what’s being shown in the scene they’re watching at the moment.
Amazon said Thursday that the Shop the Scene feature is now available on more than 600 Prime Video titles through the Amazon Shopping app for users in the U.S.
The broader Shop the Show experience, which Amazon introduced last year to let users browse products related to shows on Prime, like bobbleheads or LEGO sets, is also expanding to more than 8,000 titles, from 1,300 previously.
“We are making it easier than ever for Prime Video customers to shop what they see on screen,” Michelle Rothman, vice president of Prime Video shopping, said in the announcement Thursday.
Amazon did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment.
The new Shop the Scene feature uses AI to let a user curious about the clothing an actor is wearing in their favorite show buy the same outfit or a similar one from Amazon from their phone. The match may not always be exact.
Prime Video is also getting a new “shop” tab inside X-Ray, which lets users identify actors or music playing in a show while watching. Users will now be able to open X-Ray with their remote and browse products associated with what they are watching on the shop tab and finish the transaction on their phone.
Profiting from streaming
Companies like Netflix, Disney, and Peacock have for years experimented with ways to make streaming more profitable, including by increasing subscription prices, cracking down on account sharing, and incorporating tiered subscription models and ad-supported streaming.
Amazon’s move is the most recent effort to capitalize on the content already capturing people’s attention—and it’s not the first company to try it.
NBC’s streaming service Peacock introduced a Must ShopTV feature in 2023 that let users purchase content-featured products in real time. Disney through its streaming service Disney+ has also experimented with a shoppable TV feature that allowed subscribers to shop on certain pages via a QR code on their TV screen.
Amazon’s latest move also helps its behemoth online shopping business expand through its growing Prime Video business. Amazon said late last year that its ad-supported Prime Video tier now reaches more than 315 million people worldwide, a big leap from the 200 million users it disclosed in 2024.
Amazon has tried to more closely intertwine shopping and entertainment for years, including with a virtual product placement technology, or VPP, that uses machine learning to allow advertisers to insert their brands into films and TV shows after they’ve been produced.
There’s some data to show that product placement may be worth it. A survey by YouGov found earlier this year that just over half of U.S. adults consider product placement to be an effective form of advertising, compared to 14% who said it was ineffective.
Some 4% of the people surveyed said they took action after seeing a brand featured in content they watched. Of those people, 22% searched for the product online and 10% said they made a purchase.
