Why incremental reach is an important benefit of Streaming TV ads

As the streaming TV landscape continues to evolve and grow, it’s important for brands to understand how to meet audiences wherever they’re enjoying content. In February 2021, the number of US households with Internet-enabled TV connected devices reached 77%, representing 4% growth from the previous year. According to a September report from eMarketer, the US is expected to reach 138.7 million ad-supported video-on-demand viewers in 2022, an increase of 67% in the last three years.

“These are huge, engaged viewing audiences your brand can reach with its message,“ said Amazon Ads Product Marketing Manager Andrew Cole at unBoxed in October. ”Lots of people are streaming video, and Amazon’s ad-supported streaming TV content plays an important role in that viewing experience.“

Amazon’s ad-supported streaming TV content and Twitch jointly reach an unduplicated monthly audience of 135 million viewers across the US.¹ Brands can show up alongside IMDb TV Original hit shows and movies, during live sports, within live entertainment on Twitch, across the top TV networks and broadcasters (like Discovery, CW, CNNGo), or appear in apps on Fire TV, such as the News app.

“Holistically, we have both the content sources and device end points that allow advertisers to reach Amazon audiences wherever they engage with streaming content,” Cole said.

What’s important to understand, Cole said, is how these Streaming TV ads can be used to help expand a brand’s reach beyond traditional linear TV. One benefit of Streaming TV ads is its incremental reach, which Cole defined as “the unique audiences a Streaming TV ad campaign engages that supplements the audience reached by a brand’s traditional TV campaign.”

One recent study from Amazon Ads and Nielsen found that Streaming TV ads campaigns delivered an average of 6.5% incremental reach to a brand’s linear TV campaign reach. This means a campaign that engaged 100 million viewers on broadcast TV could reach an incremental 6.5 million viewers by adding Amazon’s Streaming TV ads to the media mix.

“Make no mistake, broadcast TV is still a very effective way to reach audiences at scale. But Streaming TV ads can reach audiences at scale and reach audiences that are incremental to linear TV viewership,” Cole said. “They’re an incredible complement to broadcast TV campaigns to extend reach in a smart way.”

Beyond the incremental reach, Streaming TV ads can also help brands reach more relevant audiences.

“Amazon Ads provides rich and robust interest-based signals through our behavioral audience segments like lifestyle, in-market, and lookalike audiences,“ Cole said. ”You can engage with audiences based on shopping events on Amazon or based on content they’re streaming on Prime Video or Twitch.“

Another benefit of Streaming TV ads is the ability to measure the results of campaigns. As Cole explained, Streaming TV ads allow advertisers to better understand impressions delivered, unique reach, and video completion rate. Advertisers using Streaming TV ads can also measure their campaigns using supported third-party measurement solutions from over 20 supported vendors—like Kantar, Nielsen, and Oracle. “They allow you to measure other elements impacted by your Streaming TV campaign, including brand reach, brand lift, and offline sales,” Cole said of these measurement solutions.