• Amazon (AMZN -0.7%) has taken a low-key approach to marketing Prime Instant Video even as its content library has swelled to include 40K+ movies and TV episodes, but that might be starting to change. The company recently began airing a TV ad (video) trumpeting Prime Instant’s library and relatively low cost.

• Prime Instant comes bundled with a $79/year Amazon Prime subscription. As with many other things, Amazon has provided few details about usage rates for the service, which the company has spent hundreds of millions (if not more) to build out.

• The fact Amazon doesn’t provide a monthly subscription option for Prime has held back Prime Instant’s growth relative to Netflix (NFLX -1.8%) which had 31.1M U.S. subs at the end of Q3. But with Prime subscription growth having apparently picked up lately, the service is nonetheless now available to quite a few U.S. consumers.

• Amazon recently proclaimed it now has “tens of millions” of Prime subs, and CIRP estimated last month the Prime subscriber base had grown to 16.7M.

Read the full report here.