For a billion dollars, you get one of the most popular shows on television. It also indicates your ambitions for the future of the media.
As part of the new media rights deals unveiled by the National Football League on Thursday,
Amazon.
com Inc. will make its Prime Video service the new home of Thursday Night Football and coveted advertising airtime, taking over from
Fox Corp.
by 2023.
Pact is by far Amazon’s largest streaming game to date, with the company paying an average of about $1 billion a year for game rights.
But after rising to third place in the digital advertising industry, trailing only Google and the
Facebook,
is a move that could help Amazon take the lead in the future of TV ad sales.
Amazon said the addition of NFL exclusive titles will encourage people to try its original content. But while the pandemic has stunted the growth of streaming TV, the $70 billion successor to the traditional TV advertising market, Amazon has also sought to expand its streaming offerings for marketers.
The company has struck deals to bring IMDb TV, a free, ad-supported streaming service, to more households; it has ordered a spin-off of one of Amazon Prime’s most popular series, the crime drama Bosch, for IMDb TV, while also ordering other original content for the service; and it is testing retargeting of Amazon.com customers with display ads that amplify the ads shown to them on the streaming TV service.
Its actions expanded Amazon’s U.S. broadcast advertising presence to more than 55 million active monthly viewers in January, up from 20 million a year earlier, said an Amazon executive provided by the company on condition that the executive not be named.
Amazon is still far behind the leader in streaming advertising,
Walt Disney Co.
Hulu and a competitor with more direct distribution,
Roku Inc.
But the vast consumer data available to the company through its e-commerce operations could fuel its streaming TV ambitions.
According to a person familiar with the company’s advertising business, Amazon’s revenue from streaming TV grew faster than more established ad segments like search and display in 2020, though from a much smaller base. According to executives, streaming TV accounts for about 15 to 20 percent of spending by Amazon’s two largest ad buying agencies.
The deal covers ads Amazon sells on its own streaming services, such as IMDb TV, ad inventory it sells in other apps it offers on its Fire TV platform, and the rights to sell live sports ads it already offers. That includes Thursday Night Football simulations, in a deal that precedes a new agreement between Amazon and the NFL.
Bosch with Titus Welliver in an episode of the Amazon Prime original series. The winner of the show, which ends this year, has received an order from Amazon for a free IMDb TV service, which will feature Mr Welliver.
Photo:
Said Adyani / Amazon Studios
Advertisers are increasingly interested in streaming television, especially on internet-connected television sets. According to research firm eMarketer, U.S. ad spending will be nearly $13.41 billion this year, up from $9.03 billion in 2020.
Marketers who sell products on Amazon now have another way to reach consumers outside of Amazon.com’s e-commerce platform, said Sal Candela, president of U.S. investments at Omnicom Media Group, the media services division of Amazon.com.
Omnicom Group Inc.
It is usually more beneficial for them to have an option via video and a large glass screen in their living room.
One of the biggest challenges for Amazon is to offer enough high-quality programs to attract more advertising spending.
It is trying to use its Prime Video service, a largely free subscription service, to its advantage in the ad wars. In addition to extending the earlier, more limited Thursday Night Football simulcast rights, for which Amazon sold some ad time, and the announced spin-off for IMDb TV, other Prime spin-offs are also being considered.
He also explored how to watch previous seasons of the original Prime series, such as. B. The Amazing Mrs. Maisel, to IMDb TV. There are no immediate plans to do so, Amazon’s chief executive said.
Last year, Amazon also created a separate team in its Amazon Studios division to produce original programming for IMDb TV, and a dozen titles are planned for this year, according to an Amazon executive.
Today, IMDb TV largely aggregates other people’s content, which provides very little originality, said Susan Shikofer, director of digital investment at advertising giant GroupM, which is part of the European Union.
WPP
SPS. If they add more original content and other high-quality content, they will be able to offer a larger pool of content.
It has other merits. Amazon has told ad buyers that by the end of 2021 they will be able to link inventory from its Twitch video service to other video ad streams within Amazon’s ad buying tool, according to people familiar with the matter. Twitch stock is currently available separately from other sources of supply.
Amazon is building its streaming business differently. Disney, for example, has a streaming shipping deal in 2019 that will allow it to package and sell some of Hulu’s ad inventory for the first time, said people familiar with the matter.
And in recent months, Amazon has expanded distribution of IMDb TV to Roku, Google Chromecast and Android TV devices. IMDb TV will be available on all major streaming devices by the end of the first quarter, an Amazon official said.
Amazon went from nothing to something pretty quickly.
– David Campanelli, chief investment officer at Horizon Media, on Amazon’s arrival as an ad seller in streaming TV.
Amazon does not break down its ad revenue for streaming TV, making it difficult to compare the tech giant to others.
For streaming TV, Roku is the most direct comparison to Amazon. According to market research firm Parks Associates, Amazon was the second largest provider of streaming TV devices in the US, accounting for 33 percent of devices in households in the third quarter of 2020, behind Roku at 38 percent.
But the gap is wider when it comes to advertising revenue from streaming TV: By 2020, the top three buyers were spending twice as much on Roca as on Amazon for streaming TV, according to company officials. And Hulu has an edge over both, with 10 times more advertising than Amazon in this category, officials say.
Amazon has gone from nothing to something pretty quickly, says David Campanelli, chief investment officer of ad agency Horizon Media Inc. in an interview about Amazon’s arrival as an ad seller in streaming TV. It takes some time to recover.
Starting in mid-2019, Amazon wanted to bring in $100 million for the year. According to a person familiar with the company’s advertising business, it has generated $1 billion in revenue from streaming TV ads, and that number is likely to increase significantly by 2020 as the inventory and total playback volume of streaming video increases during the pandemic.
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Amazon is considering how to use its more established advertising business to its advantage. The company is testing a so-called retargeting program that allows marketers to place tracking ads in front of Amazon.com audiences who have already seen their ads on, say, IMDb TV, an Amazon official said.
He even tries to make his current stock an asset by forming a chance to buy it as a reward.
Another executive from an ad agency who spent about $20 million on Amazon ads in 2020 said he included streaming TV in his Amazon purchases for the first time last year. Amazon introduced it as a new option available to its customers if they spend more globally.
By partnering with them, we include the cool things we get when we do that in our overall spending goals, he said.
Send an email to Sahil Patel at [email protected].
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