Amazon Has a lot Riding on Black Friday
The company needs to prove its ability to drive sales if it wants to matter in TV
Recently, a wide receiver on the Denver Broncos took major offense for being labelled by a commentator as “just a guy,” causing a mild social media storm.
A few years ago, Charles Barkley threw similar shade at the entire Knicks roster, saying, “they got a bunch of JAGs, as I call them. Just A Guy.”
The implication with this JAG label is that you’re nothing special. So what if you made it to professional sports - you’re not a superstar, and there are dozens of others just like you.
I thought of this a few days ago when The Information reported that Amazon - which is about to roll out ads to its Prime Video service -is aggressively seeking out major ad commitments from TV advertisers. Amazon pushed one ad agency to lay out $100 million next year, reported the Information, while in another case Amazon wanted an agency to spend more on Prime Video than they do on Hulu. It should be noted, this was outside of the deals Amazon negotiates with brands for Thursday Night Football.
The question is- why would brands think about doing that?
The levels of spending Amazon is after doesn’t seem to track at all with the service’s viewership or level of import. Yes, Amazon Prime does boast of over 150 million subscribers - but we know many of them are there primarily for the free shipping.
According to Nielsen’s The Gauge report, Amazon Prime accounted for 3.4% of all TV viewing in August. That’s not bad - it’s more than double that of say a Max or a Peacock - but it’s just a third of YouTube’s share, and about 40% of Netflix’s.
Plus, while Amazon has a solid mix of originals, they very rarely crack the weekly streaming top 10 list, and aren’t “in the zeitgeist” the way that Netflix likes to tout itself.
Brands definitely want to be alongside the next “Wednesday” or “Love is Blind” - but the next “Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” - I’m not so sure.
Amazon’s most interesting programming may actually be found on FreeVee, which carried the Emmy-nominated and hilarious “Jury Duty.” (That’s not going to be confusing at all, selling and marketing two ad-supported streaming service at once).
As The Information pointed out, its suddenly getting crowded in CTV. This isn’t retail media, where Amazon can force a multi-billion dollar ad business to materialize by basically charging all of its sellers a toll. Right now Prime Video risks becoming '‘just another streamer.”
That’s why I think that Amazon’s streaming of the Jets Dolphins game on Black Friday
As I’ve written about before, Amazon would really like to prove that its massive pile of shopping data can be used to enhance TV advertising - in fact, it’s uniquely positioned to make CTV shopping happen.
But so far, Amazon’s TV ad sales strategy has been fairly cautious. Most of the advertisers during its NFL games have been typical big TV brands running big broad TV ads, for instance. Maybe you see a lot of ads encouraging you to add items to your cart - but I sure don’t.
For the big Black Friday NFL experiment, Amazon is planning to feature interactive ads and more consumer packaged goods advertisers, according to Ad Age.
If there’s ever a day that people are in “fuck it, let’s buy it mode,” it’s Black Friday (if I was an alcohol brand, I’d target Jet fans that day). Amazon needs that day to train a big audience how to engage with TV ads in a way they’re not used to or inclined to. Not easy.
Perhaps more importantly, Amazon needs to show that it has the power to reinvent TV advertising. This may be through interactivity - or it may be through superior targeting or attribution. It has to be something. If the most powerful commerce company on the planet - not to mention the one with the greatest pool of first party data that can be used for ads- can’t use those strengths to its advantage in TV advertising - then what are we doing here?
The last think Prime Video wants to be just another CTV guy.