Despite providing great video content, Amazon hasn’t exactly proven itself to be a great advertiser, when looking at it’s OTT Prime Video even-though it has invaluable data points (from an advertisers’ point of view) from every use of the OTT service by it’s subscribers. Plus it doesn’t have a great inventory for an OTT Advertising. This is not counting Twitch (a subsidiary of Amazon), as it is a separate entity from Prime Video.
But with the introduction of it’s Fire TV platform, it’s Amazon Publisher Services (APS) network last year, Amazon’s inventory has grown and is still growing significantly. This includes it’s partner pubs and apps, some live sporting events and it’s ad-supported streaming video channel IMDb TV. And while Roku has more households under it’s belt and YouTube has more users, Amazon still brings in a lot of customers and has an untapped inventory which makes it attractive to CTV advertisers.
Amazon is closing gaps so quickly that multiple news outlets have cited that it is on track to be the leading course for Connected TV advertising. Amazon has honed it’s mid-flight optimization and post-campaign re-targeting products this past year. Amazon has a fledgling ad platform, so it’s best is yet to come.