Binge watching and binge shopping come together: Amazon lets Prime viewers buy what characters wear and use, or the next closest thing

Amazon is pushing Prime Video a step closer to the shopping aisle. On Thursday, it announced Shop the Scene, a feature that lets viewers pull up items inspired by what’s on screen and buy them through the Amazon Shopping app with little interruption.

The feature is live on more than 600 Prime Video titles in the U.S. Amazon says it can use AI to identify what an actor is wearing and offer the same item or something close to it. Close, in other words, may be good enough.

Amazon is also widening Shop the Show, a related tool it introduced last year for browsing products tied to Prime Video titles. That experience now covers more than 8,000 titles, up from 1,300. The company also added a shop tab inside X-Ray, the Prime Video tool that already helps viewers identify actors and music while they watch.

The flow is simple: open X-Ray with the remote, browse the linked products, then finish the purchase on a phone. Michelle Rothman, vice president of Prime Video shopping, said Amazon is making it easier for customers to shop what they see on screen.

This is part commerce play, part streaming strategy. Netflix, Disney and Peacock have all tried to squeeze more money from streaming through higher prices, account-sharing crackdowns, ad tiers and other experiments. Peacock launched Must ShopTV in 2023, and Disney+ has tried QR-code shopping on some pages. Amazon, naturally, gets to do this with a giant retail machine already waiting behind the curtain.

There is at least some evidence people will bite. A YouGov survey earlier this year found just over half of U.S. adults see product placement as effective advertising, while 4% said they had taken action after seeing a brand in content. Of those, 22% searched online and 10% bought something. Not huge numbers, but enough for Amazon to keep the checkout button close at hand.