Amazon Video Widget Should Be An Overlay

Now here’s a rather strange approach to video monetization: affiliate links and hosting with no destination. Amazon just launched Your Video Widget. Amazon affiliates can now host videos on Amazon and have selected affiliate links appear at various points during playback. You get a video widget, but no video page.

This would work so much better if the affiliate links could be overlaid on videos hosted outside Amazon. That would cut hosting costs on Amazon’s side and upload times on affiliates’ side. After all, it’s not like Amazon’s building a video repository.