That article unfortunately happens to be behind a paywall, yes. I'll throw up some alternatives that covered mostly the same news:
https://decider.com/2018/03/15/amazo...bers-released/
The document shows that Amazon takes the total cost of the season (in this case, $72 million) and divides by the number of first streams it has (1.15 million) to calculate how much it cost to bring in each individual viewer.
If Amazon is going to base its creative decisions solely on the first stream metric, it makes sense that it chose to spend a massive sum of money on The Lord of the Rings prequel.
And I also found this one while looking for the alternative stuff above. Seems Amazon and Nielsen rating numbers don't quite match up, and Amazon's estimates are quite a bit higher in calculation.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nielsen...zon-prime-nfl/
Through six weeks, Nielsen says the Thursday night games have averaged 10.3 million viewers. Amazon says the average is 12.1 million. Amazon's estimate has been bigger than Nielsen's each week.
"I don't at all believe that Amazon's numbers are not right," said Connie Kim, Nielsen spokeswoman. "And I don't believe that our numbers are not right."
And from a Fortune article covering the same news:
https://fortune.com/2022/10/25/how-m...ielsen-rating/
For now, ad prices for the Thursday games are set using Nielsen’s numbers. But Amazon clearly has an incentive to let clients know that it believes more people are actually watching.
I'm not sure what this means exactly, but it is definitely some evidence that Amazon's estimates may be higher for a reason. And while the estimates themselves may not be wrong, we don't know exactly how they're tallying views overall. Cuz a 1-2 million more estimates than Nielsen is quite a big difference. Though I believe Nielsen ratings only count TV-based streaming, and not web if I'm not mistaken?