Amazon’s inaugural NewFronts invites advertisers to reimagine how they reach audiences

May 03, 2021

For years, Amazon has provided a wide variety of entertainment experiences for customers. As a streaming device maker and content provider, we offer brands a myriad of opportunities to drive discovery and connect with customers in meaningful ways. With the continuous growth of streaming TV viewership, these connections are more important than ever before.

At our inaugural IAB NewFronts today, we announced that Amazon Streaming TV ads and Twitch jointly reach an unduplicated monthly audience of 120 million viewers across the US.1 This growth is exciting, as it signifies that our customer-centric approach to entertainment is resonating with Amazon Streaming TV ad audiences, across IMDb TV, Twitch, live sports on Prime Video, and top-tier network and broadcaster apps that can be accessed on Fire TV.

The bonus is that when we create great customer experiences, we help our advertisers achieve better results. Throughout our virtual NewFronts presentation, “Reach Reimagined,” we highlighted some of the ways Amazon Ads enables marketers to reach and engage streaming audiences, and reimagine ad experiences with smarter and simpler streaming TV campaigns. Here’s what we shared.

New Originals from IMDb TV, Amazon’s free streaming service

During Amazon’s NewFronts presentation, IMDb TV announced an order for On Call, a new half-hour drama series from prolific TV producer Dick Wolf. The premium, free streaming service also revealed series orders for three unscripted projects, including: the docuseries Luke Bryan: My Dirt Road Diary; the creepy, crawly true crime series Bug Out; and a new original home design series with phenom interior designer Jeff Lewis. Additionally, IMDb TV announced a greenlight for High School, a new Original series cocreated by platinum recording artists Tegan and Sara and executive producer Clea DuVall.

Prior to the start of Amazon’s NewFronts, IMDb TV announced a greenlight for season two of Top Class and a slate of five development projects: Blessed and Highly Favored, Greek Candy, Primo, The Fed, and The Pradeeps of Pittsburgh. The streaming service also revealed the July 9 premiere date for the highly anticipated crime drama Leverage: Redemption and shared a first look video.

Photograph of women and men; cast members of a show

“IMDb TV is just getting started. If the present is a hit film, the future's looking like a blockbuster smash: bigger, better, always entertaining, and always free.”

– Ryan Pirozzi, Co-Head of Content and Programming, IMDb TV

Amazon Prime Video will be home to NFL’s Thursday Night Football

Earlier this year, Amazon Prime Video signed a 10-year agreement with the National Football League to exclusively broadcast 15 Thursday Night Football games during the regular season and one pre-season game each year in the United States, beginning in 2023. During NewFronts, Amazon announced the games will now stream on Prime Video a year earlier, starting in 2022. This move will give tens of millions of new and existing Prime members exclusive access to must-watch live football, even sooner.

"Thursday Night Football was the top-rated weeknight primetime show across all genres [in 2020] ... And something that excited us even more is that the average viewing window for our NFL exclusive game was 82 minutes. The average for the NFL last season was 67 minutes. So people watched us for fifteen minutes longer than the other guys."

– Marie Donoghue, Vice President of Global Sports Video, Amazon

Thursday Night Football banner

Solutions that make Streaming TV advertising smarter, simpler, and more engaging

Amazon Ads revealed a new actionable video ads solution, which allows viewers to interact with brands on the IMDb TV app on Fire TV, without disrupting their viewing experience. When viewers see one of these ads, they can take Amazon shopping actions―including “add to cart,” “add to Alexa shopping list,” “buy now,” or “shop now”―directly from the ad using their voice or Fire TV remote. This product is currently available to a limited group of beta participants.

We also announced a new intuitive way for self-service advertisers to buy guaranteed Streaming TV supply through Amazon DSP with Audience Guaranteed. This tool enables media buyers to create Streaming TV ad campaigns with fixed pricing, and they only pay for the impressions that reach their audiences. Additionally, advertisers can create and start their guaranteed Streaming TV ad buys in less than 30 minutes, and easily manage campaigns through their self-service Amazon DSP accounts.

Ad placement

“Customers are changing the way they watch TV, so we've changed the way brands reach them. For starters, three-quarters of our audience is completely unexposed to linear TV campaigns. We give advertisers the tools to reach audiences based on our billions of shopping and streaming signals, and take action in simpler, smarter ways.”

– Mark Eamer, Vice President of Streaming TV, Brand Advertising and IMDb TV, Amazon Ads

Better together with interactive live-streamed entertainment on Twitch

Twitch is a place where millions of people come together every day to chat, interact, and make their own live entertainment together. The service is part of Amazon Ads' Streaming TV ads, enabling brands to reach a wide breadth of viewers with diverse creative interests.

During NewFronts, Twitch highlighted a couple of its premium partnership channels, featuring live-streaming content from popular media brands, across a range of categories, including gaming, music, sports, and lifestyle and entertainment. For example, Twitch joined forces with Rolling Stone for a series of musical experiences with artists, including news, interviews, engaging conversations, and concerts. Twitch also partnered with AMC to create an interactive fan-forward channel to celebrate and engage with The Walking Dead Universe by live-streaming original programming exclusively on Twitch.

“Twitch goes so far beyond gaming.
It's become a beloved place where people find folks with shared passions. They may come for the content, but they stay because of a connection to a creator or a community. And that connection is so real; it’s really deep, and it gets built on Twitch and it permeates everything.”

– Sara Clemens, Chief Operating Officer, Twitch

TWD ad placement

On the horizon for Amazon Streaming TV ads

The evolving streaming landscape is full of possibility and opportunity. While we’re excited about the updates we shared at NewFronts—across Amazon content, services, and devices—there’s still more work to be done. We’ll continue innovating to make Streaming TV ads smarter and simpler to help brands achieve better results while providing great customer experiences.

“Reach Reimagined” will be available to watch on-demand here until June 30.

Sources

1Reach is defined as unduplicated U.S. viewers of Amazon’s ad-supported streaming content and Twitch across any device.