Amazon Ads has no offseason following the successful second season of Thursday Night Football on Amazon Prime Video.
At last week’s CES conference in Las Vegas, Amazon was already discussing next season with advertisers and plans to update the sophisticated advertising products that displayed during the game, according to Amy McDevitt, sports brand partnership lead at Amazon Ads.
Amazon is also planning to stream the National Women’s Soccer League in the spring and NASCAR next year as it extends its sports programming offerings for advertisers.
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“There really is no offseason here,” McDevitt explained. “We’re at CES having conversations and getting people to start thinking about what they want to do in live sports next year.”
Thursday Night Football’s viewership increased by 24% to 11.86 million viewers per game during the recently concluded NFL season. At the same time, Thursday Night Football remained popular among viewers aged 18 to 34. Its audience was seven years younger than linear NFL telecasts.
The games also drew 4.1 million cord-cutters, up 55%.
“For advertisers, it’s a great opportunity to reach people that you can’t find anywhere else,” said McDevitt.
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Advertisers turned out for Amazon. More over half of Thursday Night Football’s advertisers were new to Prime Video, and around 20% were new to advertising during NFL games.
“They’re dipping their toe in the water on the NFL,” she went on to say. “I’m sure the NFL is excited about it, too.”
Working with measurement and analytics firm EDO, Amazon discovered that advertising during Thursday Night Football was effective, with a 70% higher search rate than commercials in primetime on broadcast and cable, as well as a 59% higher search rate for NFL telecasts on linear networks.
Throughout the season, Amazon also broadcast the NFL’s inaugural Black Friday game on the busiest shopping day of the year. According to Nielsen, the game garnered a distinct crowd, with 24% of viewers viewing a game on Prime Video for the first time, while 31% did not watch any NFL games on Thanksgiving Day.
“The unique thing that we bring to market is the ability to connect content with commerce for brands,” McDevitt went on to say. Many sponsors collaborated with Amazon to produce football-themed advertising, some of which featured Thursday Night Football talent, in order to be more contextually relevant to football. Last season’s brands were State Farm and General Mills.
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“We’ve doubled the work we did in that space in 2023, and I can only imagine that we’ll do more of it next season,” she was quoted as saying.
The engagement with interactive commercials on Black Friday was 250% higher than the games Amazon streamed on Thursday nights. Amazon’s shoppable interactive video advertisements on Black Friday received four times more engagement than ads using QR codes for firms who ran both interactive and QR code ads.
Amazon Ads is hoping to improve the impact of its ads next season.
Last season’s interactive advertising were shoppable on Fire TV devices. Next season, fans will be able to add things to their Amazon card from the telecast with a simple click.
Amazon is also improving its audience-based creative, which allows advertisers to broadcast commercials tailored to different target populations within the same 30-second commercial period. Next season, targeting options will be enhanced, and brands will have the option to exclude specific populations.
McDevitt indicated that some marketers would want to collaborate with Amazon to keep the cameras rolling after the game while the victorious team celebrates, leading into Prime’s postgame show.
“We’re lucky, because we can provide a lot of optionality,” she went on to say. “We’ve got alternate streams, which have been really fun to play around with.”
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Amazon will create ad packages for the NWSL and NASCAR based on Thursday Night Football programs.
“We’ll create a bespoke opportunity that fits within soccer,” McDevitt said in a statement. “I understand we’ll want to get the sport properly. We want to build something distinctive for each of those sites while also ensuring that the fans feel we are authentic inside the surroundings.
McDevitt stated that Amazon is seeing a lot of advertiser interest in women’s sports. Amazon is currently formalizing what it will bring to market.
“We’re very excited to not only engage with our advertising customers, but champion women’s sports and create interesting brand experiences around that,” she went on to say.
She also mentioned that preparation has begun for Amazon’s NASCAR races, which will not begin until 2025.
Soccer, unlike football, has few timeouts during play, so most advertising will air at halftime. Auto racing also provides little opportunities for commercials.
“Our production team is really talented and we’ll continue to work with them to figure out how we can bring more content to the sports fan,” McDevitt said in a statement. “It could involve partnering with somebody on a break takeover, where we keep one eye on what’s happening on the field as we’re telling an advertising message at the same time.”
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