Amazon Flash: Ads Arrive on Prime Streaming

Recently, as we all braced for commercials to start appearing during our Prime streaming, I chatted with 彭博资讯 's Spencer Soper to talk about the new advertising ambitions around Prime Video. Yesterday, Bloomberg ran Spencer’s piece Amazon’s Video Ad Push Aims to Turn TVs Into Shopping Carts.

We talked about the rippling impact, as well as how Amazon derives a huge advantage from its rich, walled garden of retail media data. This enables Amazon to be hyper-targeted, which ultimately means improved performance for ads. Check out my TV conversation with Ed Ludlow and Caroline Hyde of Bloomberg Technology for more analysis.

The top takeaways for us all (both viewers and marketers):

#1: Advertisers are cracking down on performance & effectiveness

Right now, advertisers are hyper-focused on making ad spending as effective as it can possibly be. With its rich 1st party data and sweeping access across the path-to-purchase, Amazon stands the best chance to provide advertisers with formats that help them allocate spend well - and measure it.

#2: Amazon is making good on a mission to give SMBs access that’s on par with big brands

Amazon’s ambition is to bring this advertising opportunity to the smaller or mid-market brands, not just big brands. Enabling self-service access to its ad inventory across the board is a significant way they can democratize access.

#3: Viewers will get used to Shoppable TV via Amazon’s events

Amazon’s tent pole events, like Black Friday football for example, will offer great opportunities for innovation with shoppable ad formats, and as a result, viewers will acclimatize to the experience over time. It’s quite possible that, within a few years, shoppable TV can become commonplace and perform even better because more and more people are interacting with the ads as formats get better and adoption spreads. We are in a "test & learn" phase with shoppable content, so be prepared for a lot of experimentation (and interesting experiences - some good, some bad).

Tik Tok was recently seen testing a new feature to make posts shoppable.

Conclusion

Are you okay with commercials, or prefer to pay for an ad-free experience? What is your forecast for the impact of Amazon’s new streaming ads? Please drop a comment and keep the conversation going.? And feel free to DM me to learn more.

And, if you’re already a Pacvue customer, you can also reach out to your account manager for more information on how to activate on CTV and our early findings.