Amazon Prime Video adds short-form news clips to compete with TikTok

Amazon announced on Monday that Prime Video is expanding its news offering with on-demand short-form clips covering local and national stories. The clips will first be available on TVs and other living room devices, with a rollout to the web and Prime Video's mobile apps planned soon.

The new clips will appear in the News destination within the Prime Video app, specifically in the Trending Topics and Local News carousels. They join the platform's existing local, national, and world news coverage from several major providers, which is available to all U.S. users regardless of Prime membership. Amazon has not yet confirmed whether the mobile clips will be formatted for vertical video, but said they would be treated as short-form content on both iOS and Android.

Competing for younger viewers

While TikTok is best known as an entertainment platform, it has increasingly become, along with Instagram, a place where younger audiences get their news. Gen Z in particular often follows news creators and influencers on short-form apps, including YouTube Shorts. Amazon, which lacks a dedicated social platform of its own, is instead adding short-form video to Prime Video in an effort to capture Gen Z's attention.

According to Pew Research findings, younger news consumers are drawn less by clip length itself and more by how the content is presented — they favor news that feels organic rather than heavily produced.

Prime Video is not the first streaming service to introduce short-form clips. Peacock added the feature in March, followed by HBO Max and Netflix in July, and Disney+ in August. Together, these moves reflect an industry-wide shift toward meeting viewers who increasingly consume entertainment and information in short bursts rather than longer sessions.