Amazon NFL Ads Review - It Was - Fine I Guess?

The CTV revolution is on hold as Amazon plays it safe

Congratulations Jeff Bezos and company - you broadcast an NFL game, and it seemed to work ok! The picture was solid for me, though Mike Francesa wasn’t happy.

Mike Francesa @MikeFrancesa

I will watch a game on any platform. But, Prime has to do a much better job with the quality of the video. Just terrible.

As for advertising, on this historic occasion - you chose to run an ad strategy that - isn’t far off from what CBS was doing in the 80s.

That’s ok for now - if not a bit uninspired for the company that has perhaps the greatest pile of consumer shopping data ever seen, and is built around showing people exactly what they need to buy - now.

Last night featured a lot of classic NFL-type advertising - movie trailers, luxury cars, online car sellers, insurance, Draft Kings, etc. Mostly things you can’t actually click and buy on Amazon, and lots of products that take a fair amount of consumer consideration.

And boy, were there a lot of ‘house’ ads for Amazon Prime shows, FreeVee, and of course Thursday Night Football on Amazon Prime. I kept trying to tell myself, this is just like what NBC, Fox, etc. all do with football (how many times did I hear Pat Summerall tell me “Murder She Wrote” was coming up after the game). Still, it was a bit much. I kept waiting for an ad for the Amazon DSP.

The NFL has always been a blunt -force reach play, and Amazon’s plan seemed to be, why mess with the most valuable ad vehicle there is?

Which is smart, at least for game one. But it sort of makes you wonder, what’s the point exactly?

I’m not sure what I expected to be different last night. I realize if 6 million tuned into last night’s game, we’re not at a place where we’d each get 6 million different ad experiences. I also didn’t think each commercial would have an ‘ad to cart now’ overlay on the screen.

But if Amazon doesn’t do something special advertising-wise while streaming a marquee sports event, and just sticks with the easy money, then what does it say about CTV advertising?

I’m sure that Amazon is promising last night’s advertisers some sort of behind the scenes attribution ju-jitsu. According to Bloomberg, one of the big selling points for brands running on Thursday Night Football this year is that the ads will be more effective. We’ll see. The fact that watching an ad on Prime makes it much harder to flip around could actually help (there is something to be said for cable).

Aaron - The Book of - Fetters @fettersac

Interesting observation about NFL on Amazon - the idea of channel surfing during ads feels harder since I’d have to get out of app then back in. Does this mean ad breaks will get more #attention?

I’d think that Amazon at some point attempts some way to deliver viewers more relevant ads based on what they’ve purchased in the past, or find ways to bring smaller sellers/advertisers to TV. The first NFL game of this billion dollar deal was probably not the night.

I just hope there’s more to come. I co-hosted a Twitter Spaces session the other day with Sparrow Advisors’ Ana Milicevic, mobile ad guru Eric Seufert, and Luma’s Terry Kawaja on Netflix’s advertising rollout. I said I get why Netflix is going for astronomical CPMs and a very limited group of launch advertisers upfront - rather than going wild with targeting by using its algorithm and data and running a bunch of custom ads. The best thing Netflix can do right now is take advantage of its leverage (which won’t last forever) and not screw up its user experience. That would be a win for year one.

But as last night showed, it is possible to under-do-it with advertising. If Netflix severely limits who it sells to, it could run into frequency issues, and have to run lots of house ads for “Is it Cake?” season 2.

However, the larger issue for me is, at some point CTV ads actually have to live up to the promise that they will blend the best of TV with the best of digital. It will be a huge miss if and when most of TV is delivered via different pipes, and we’re still all watching the same ads for cloud software most of us don’t understand and will never use. Or worse, hard seltzer ads.