Amazon video push aims to keep shoppers from YouTube search

Seattle

AMAZON.COM Inc wants to prevent holiday shoppers from straying to Google's YouTube and Facebook Inc's social-media sites in search of product videos, so the e-commerce giant is working with merchants to match the effort on its website.

Pet supplies, baby products, houseware and electronics are the focus of the new push for promotional and instructional videos. Amazon this year began inviting some of its two million merchant partners to join a test programme in which the online retailer coordinates these short product videos. The plan is to post many of them to the site by mid-December, when the holiday shopping season is in full swing.