Amazon Learns a New Skill: Making Money From Alexa

For most of Alexa’s five years in existence, Amazon has focused on making its voice assistant as ubiquitous as possible, putting it in everything from microwaves to wearable rings to its growing family of Echo devices. Now Amazon has a new focus for Alexa: making money from it, reports The Information. [Editor’s note: the link is paywalled; an alternative source was not immediately available.] From the report: The company is exploring how it can profit from premium content on Alexa, such as video, music, and news, according to two people familiar with the matter. Amazon could take a cut of subscription and ad revenue from such content, the people said. Meanwhile, Amazon is keeping a closer eye on costs at the large organization responsible for its voice assistant. After several years of rapid growth saw the unit balloon to more than 10,000 people, the group’s headcount has stopped swelling, said three current or former employees. Until now, the priority for many people in the unit was proliferation — more device sales, more partnerships, and more “skills,” Amazon’s name for voice apps. But Amazon has told employees that next year it will begin assessing the success of Alexa teams partly based on “engagement” metrics that reflect customer usage of the assistant, one of the people said.