If you ever binge watched a show on Freevee, streamed your favorite video gamer on Twitch TV, or watched a favorite broadcast app on Fire TV you experienced Amazon Ads OTT.
Amazon Over-the-top (OTT) video advertising which is also known as streaming TV, refers to content and video advertising that is delivered to viewers via a streaming app over the internet. Unlike traditional cable boxes and linear TV sets that you would watch on TV.
OTT (Over-The-Top) definitions and understanding
As discussed, OTT, streaming TV, and Amazon OTT, refers to any type of streaming media content delivered over the internet. It even includes subscription streaming services where users can access content on-demand without cable or traditional satellite TV.
The unique value to Amazon OTT is that viewers can watch OTT content across a wide array of devices such as mobile phones, gaming consoles and tablets. However, the majority of viewing occurs on Fire TV and connected TV devices (CTV).
Does OTT and CTV mean the same thing?
OTT refers the content delivery while CTV refers to the devices where OTT content is delivered.
I know you are reading this and getting just as excited about Amazon OTT as we are. If you didn’t realize yet….digital marketing is full of buzzwords and acronyms that could get confusing pretty quickly.
Industry Trends Driving Amazon OTT Adoption
It probably doesn’t come as a surprise that consumers are becoming more digitally enabled throughout their lives. Cord cutting, the process of cancelling a cable or satellite TV subscription is driving a significant amount of consumers to streaming video via connected TV. There will be more than 55 Million Cord Cutters By 2022.
Amazon OTT Placements and Delivery
Amazon OTT is delivered across Fire TV and Amazon owned apps and subsidiaries. The Amazon eco-system enables significant advantages lead predominantly by Amazon’s market share, device ownership, and first party audiences. Since 81% of US consumers 18 and older have an Amazon account, it provides the perfect foundation for advertisers to reach their ideal audience.
Amazon Streaming TV ads enable advertisers to reach and connect with over 120MM unduplicated US streaming viewers. These audiences stream across a plethora of ad supported apps and publishers.
Amazon OTT video ads can reach audiences with both in and out stream video ads on Amazon affiliated sites such as IMDB.com and Twitch, including publishers’ sites through Amazon Publisher Services and third party exchanges.
Exclusive Supply
- Efficiency through direct relationships leads to no supply side fees.
- Publishers pick Amazon DSP for overall reach and usage due to Fire TV market share
- IMDb TV overlap with other apps is small (8%)
World Class Audience Data
- Amazon In-market, Lifestyle, E-Commerce, Amazon Garage
- Location targeting through Amazon user’s primary shipping address zip code vs IP
- 90% of Amazon OTT viewers watch on average two hours of streaming TV content daily
Amazon OTT 1st Party Audiences
Amazon’s ecosystem and family of subsidiaries delivers superior audience opportunities for advertisers to leverage on Amazon OTT. Whether you are shopping at Whole foods, listening to your favorite music on an Amazon Alexa device, or purchasing toothpaste. Amazon’s DSP provides many opportunities to create niche audience segmentation that aligns with company business objectives.
Amazon continues to take strive in expanding its portfolio of companies. Check out this recent press release that covers growing expansion into healthcare. The opportunity for advertising with Amazon continues to expand to every aspect of our lives and presents a unique opportunity for advertisers.
Measuring Amazon OTT Effectively
Similar to other digital marketing channels it is important that advertisers are able to measure their media investments and exposure. Fortunately for digital video advertising measuring success and analyzing streaming TV performance is much more effective vs cable or traditional TV ads.
Understanding the metrics for success will ensure you know when to make adjustments to your Amazon OTT campaign. Similar to display ad campaigns, Amazon’s cross device website pixel will be able to support on-site measurement such as homepage visits.
Here are the metrics to track:
- Impressions
- Video Completion Rate (VCR)
- Cost Per 1K Impressions (CPM)
- Time Spent With Brand (Hours viewed)
- Spend by Application
- Top 10 Device Brands by Total Impressions
- Homepage Visits
- Offline Attribution – Amazon OTT allows brands to match back offline sales data to streaming TV
Amazon OTT reporting has proven that streaming TV ads are in fact cheaper and more effective when compared to youtube ads.
Check out our case study that validates Amazon OTT is more cost effective than YouTube Pre Roll.
In addition to cost efficiency, Amazon’s marketing cloud allows advertisers to measure offline attribution. There are significant benefits to measuring OTT simply because it is an internet based video campaign. This opens up a lot of opportunity to integrate with the Amazon DSP and provide advertisers with campaign measurement they would otherwise not be able to access with Traditional TV ads across cable.
Offline attribution with Amazon OTT provides the opportunity to measure leads, sales, and other data types that are influenced by streaming TV.
Amazon is extremely well positioned to deliver full funnel attribution because they are the market leader for Fire TV devices. Since the device ownership lives with Amazon they are able to deliver streaming TV ads to only logged-in Amazon users. This ensures that the OTT ads delivered across the Amazon DSP are measurable impressions.
Check out this case study to learn more about how Amazon Ads enables sales attribution through the amazon marketing cloud.
