Amazon expects about $100 million in revenue through unique Thursday Night Football ad products, leaked document shows
- Amazon this year launched two new audience-targeting ad units within its Thursday Night Football broadcasts.
- Amazon expects the new ad units to generate roughly $100 million this year.
- Amazon believes advertising will justify investments in Prime Video, an internal document said.
Insider has learned that Amazon launched two new ad products during this year’s Thursday Night Football broadcast, which are expected to generate nearly $100 million in additional revenue.
The ad units, which Amazon first introduced at the NewFronts conference in May, allow advertisers to run different versions of their ads, tailored to the audience watching, at the same time. For example, an automaker can run a sports car commercial to a younger audience, an SUV spot to an outdoor audience, and a general brand commercial to the rest of Thursday Night Football viewers, all within the same 30-second ad position.
According to an internal document obtained by Insider, these new ads, known as “targeted pre-sold ad slot-splitting” or “targeted copy-splitting,” are expected to generate up to $80 million in new revenue for Amazon per season.
Amazon anticipates another $15 million in revenue from a second but similar type of ad unit. The second ad unit is known as “non-targeted pre-sold super sized ad slot-splitting” or “super copy-splitting,” and it allows one ad spot to be sold to a large number of different advertisers, each of whom will run an ad in that time slot but without any audience targeting.
Amazon believes that these new ad formats will be much more effective for advertisers, allowing it to charge higher prices for them than traditional media ads.
“In traditional media, everyone sees the same ad creative in an ad slot, reducing the ROl of the ad,” according to the document, referring to return on investment. “Advertisers can split the ad slot with audience targeting to display relevant targeted ads for different audience segments.” Advertisers will see higher returns on their ads, increasing average CPM per ad slot and revenue per game.”
A spokesperson for Amazon declined to comment.
‘More differentiation’
A $100 million increase in revenue may not seem like much to Amazon’s advertising unit. Amazon reported over $12 billion in advertising revenue in its most recent quarter, up 26% from the previous year, and the unit generated $38 billion in revenue in 2022.
However, these new ad units provide even more room for expansion.
Google, Meta, and traditional TV broadcasters compete with Amazon in digital advertising. As a result, as previously reported by Insider, it has been aggressively attempting to grow its ad business through approaches that can assist it in attracting brands that do not sell products on the Amazon platform.
Increasing its video ad inventory through formats such as “slot-splitting” and plans to increase ads in Prime Video shows are ways to accomplish this. Amazon announced in September that ads would be added to Prime Video unless the user paid an additional $2.99 per month.
Advertisers will “pay a higher premium” on Thursday Night Football and other premium events if Amazon can “offer more differentiation in the form of audience targeting,” according to the document.
Ad revenue will, in turn, justify Amazon’s investments in Prime Video. Or, as stated in the document, “Advertising is going to drive ROl for this property,” referring to Prime Video.
Large corporations are already taking notice. According to John Ghiorso, former CEO of Orca Pacific, which was acquired by Media.Monks, large advertisers who spend a lot of money on traditional TV ads are already “interested” and “actively engaging” in Amazon’s new ad format.
He stated that brands in the consumer package space, such as food and beverage, are particularly interested in the targeting capabilities, which are expected to improve in the future.
“It’s already a massive improvement over what’s available,” Ghiorso said in an interview.
