Amazon Catching Up to Netflix

A new report out this week from Sandvine has revealed that Amazon's video service saw a surge in usage last year, helping it jump to third place behind Netflix and YouTube traffic. Amazon Video reportedly accounted for about 4.3% of downstream internet traffic during peak evening viewing hours in North America, while Netflix accounts for about 35.2% and YouTube for about 17.5%. According to the report, "While Netflix's lead appeared to falter in the latest report after it notched 37.1 percent of traffic six months ago, the decline was likely because Netflix improved video compression. That means subscribers could continue their binge-watching marathons, but their streams had less of a data burden on networks."