Amazon Expands Sponsored Ads Portfolio With Streaming
At Amazon Ads’ annual "unBoxed" conference on Oct. 25, the e-commerce giant’s retailer media network unveiled “Sponsored TV,” a self-service ad solution for brands of all sizes that sell on Amazon in the U.S.
Sponsored TV enables brands to run streaming TV campaigns with no minimum spend to reach audiences watching content on Amazon streaming app Freevee, livestreamed entertainment on Twitch and third-party streaming TV services through Fire TV apps, according to a blog post from the retailer.
“TV is an important brand-building strategy and should not be out of reach for any business,” Ruslana Zbagerska, vice president of Amazon Ads, said in the blog. “Sponsored TV is a new streaming TV ad solution that helps brands connect with their audiences on the largest screen in the home. This includes brands that are new to advertising.”
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Sponsored TV campaigns leverage Amazon's machine learning-powered optimization models, which are informed by its first-party shopping and entertainment signals, Zbagerska added.
Amazon says the Sponsored TV solution was designed to appeal to small and medium-sized brands that may be intimidated by the cost of TV advertising, and “don’t understand how to measure the value to justify the spend,” per the blog. According to research conducted by Amazon, these marketers also often lack “TV-quality creative” when getting started.
Media-consumption research from Axios Media Trends, also cited by Amazon, also indicates that streaming TV is eclipsing linear TV as the top method of TV consumption.
“TV advertising is no longer just for the big brands,” Patrick Miller, co-founder of Flywheel, which is owned by Ascential and helps brands sell on digital marketplaces such as Amazon, said in the blog. “With self-serve buying and closed-loop measurements, Sponsored TV makes streaming TV advertising a cost-efficient option for emerging and enterprise brands that want to connect the entertainment and shopping journey for customers.”
In addition, brands with existing TV-quality assets can use those same creatives in their Sponsored TV campaigns. Alternatively, Amazon Ads also offers services to build creative using a brand’s digital and social media assets at varying rates. (Streaming TV campaigns can be created within the Amazon Ads console or using the Amazon Ads API.)
Brands can also use their TV creative across other Amazon Ads placements, including in their brand stores and other sponsored ads campaigns.
The new solution allows brands to engage with audiences that are likely to be interested in specific types of content, such as cooking and home-improvement programming, and reach audiences interested in products in categories sold in the Amazon store, per the blog. Advertisers also have access to self-service campaign metrics like the number of ad-attributed branded searches and detail page views to better understand and measure campaign performance in real time.