That's an odd initiative.
At first blush, my thought was that it wouldn't make financial sense to operate a streaming-video-service carried by a site that's mostly about drab, technical categorization of details pertaining to movie-making-trivia (and, apparently, a message board system that infamously attracts very opinionated loons).
Unbeknownst to me, Amazon.com now owns Imdb, which makes even less sense. Amazon seems to have made pretty good inroads to being a legitimate Netflix/Hulu-contender with their own productions, so why diffuse that concept by making people think of Imdb.com as an even-footed contender to Netflix/Hulu/Amazon-streaming, when you own the site?
I have to assume that this initiative is due to messy, complex broadcasting-rights that pertains to the films and tv-shows this new service is showing, and that Amazon itself can't stream under their own name (for whatever complex legal reason).
Either that, or they are soft-testing a subscription-free, ad-supported model, fueled by shows and films that Amazon can legally provide, but in the event that it crashes and burns, the initiative won't tarnish Amazon's main streaming service, because it's attached by name to a much lesser (but still credible) brand like Imdb.com.
Now that I've walked it through as I write it down, I suspect it's about the latter.
Netflix is the biggest player in monthly-subscription, streaming video-services, so if you (as a rival) is trying to formulate a strategy to gain back those eyeballs, the obvious idea is to try to try to disrupt the core idea of Netflix ("pay a low monthly price for a world of content!).
Obviously, people like Netflix for a variety of reasons, but I think a reasonably priced, ad-free, experience is pretty high up there in terms of people's priorities. But that doesn't mean that you couldn't still manage to get a sizable audience for a streaming service on the "free, but ad-supported"-model.
But there's a lot of risk in doing that, and it seems like this is Amazon's attempt at testing the waters by reshaping the identity of an established - and fairly trusted - brand that they own, backed by the sizable catalogue that Amazon owns.
