Amazon is “impressed” with how quickly agency partners in Australia are leaning into the future of streaming, according to the VP of Amazon Ads International, Tamir Bar-Haim.
Twelve weeks into Amazon Prime Video introducing ads in Australia, he said that the signals from the market are “really, really positive”.
“We’re seeing brands really excited to showcase their creative and messages alongside that world-class content, but not just to any eyeballs - to our Prime members, who are our most loyal customers,” he said.
Eight out of ten (84%) of Prime Video households have shopped on Amazon Prime Video, with those households spending 22% more per month in the Amazon store than non-Prime Video households.
That opportunity to forge a path to purchase from streaming advertisements adds to the benefit of scale that the platform offers, with Prime Video being the largest global premium ad-supported streaming service, with an average monthly ad-supported reach of 200 million global customers.
Visiting Australia for a week from his base of Toronto to spend time with the local Amazon team, along with brands and agency partners, Bar-Haim told AdNews that Australians have a willingness to experiment and innovate and a temperament that’s less interested in taking playbooks from overseas and adopting them here and much more interested in being the ones developing the best practice that the rest of the world can then go and deploy.
“It's refreshing and aligns really well with our company values and how we think about the world and do business,” he said.
“Consumers are rapidly shifting their content consumption patterns, spending less time on linear and more time on streaming, and it's been really noticeable to see how our agency partners here in Australia are adjusting the way that they plan and buy and are building capabilities for the future.
“I've been inspired by that and that's pretty far ahead of what we see in many other parts of the world.”
Bar-Haim, who leads Amazon Ads in more than 30 countries and has been in his role for a year, said that some of the most exciting feedback this week has been from brands which don't sell anything on the platform, with AdNews able to reveal that McDonald's and Suncorp are two of the partners who have come onboard to Prime Video from an advertiser perspective.
“McDonald's would be one example who leaned in with us right at the start - they've been trying to reach families and value conscious consumers and they found our audience is a great fit for what they're looking to accomplish,” he said.
“Suncorp is another example who has been trying to lean deeper and deeper into the connected TV space, and they found early on that they've been able to drive really compelling incremental reach, particularly in prime time, when compared with linear.
“When you look at our value proposition around driving full funnel advertising at scale for everyone, that value proposition holds true whether you sell products on Amazon or not.”
Bar-Haim said that with the retail media environment currently comes billions of first party shopping signals, and utilised in conjunction with the first party signals that a brand has means that advertisers have a “really rich and compelling opportunity” to reinvent the path to purchase.
“It means more effective advertising for the brand, but it also means a better customer experience at the end of the day,” he said.
“Our agency partners have given us great feedback around our investments in building a full funnel set of advertising capabilities. They want to take brand advertising and make it more accountable, make it more efficient and make that dollar stretch even further and so I think they appreciate the bets that we're making in that space.”
On the flip side, one problem statement that the Amazon Ads’ leader said had repeatedly come up in conversations with agencies this week is that the video space is still too fragmented.
“When you look across linear, BVOD, streaming services - that landscape is still confusing and messy for marketers who want to find more simple, streamlined ways to rationalise that work and deliver the same or better business outcomes than they had in the past,” he said.
“That's a great opportunity for us to try to simplify that and if you look at the work that we're doing within Prime Video, I think that gives you a peek into what the future can look like.
“We view Prime Video as the entertainment hub in the living room, and when you jump on the couch at the end of the day and you turn on Prime Video, you have Amazon original content but the next minute you may turn on a cricket match or you may pull up third party content through our channel partners.”
Prime Video viewers worldwide watch an average of 14 hours per month on the service. On average, these audiences are watching 40 minutes of content per viewing session and just under two hours of total content per day.
With a current and upcoming content slate that includes worldwide hits like Fallout, The Boys and Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power, local upcoming originals like season two of Deadloch and the Australian adaptation of The Office will sit alongside new seasons of the likes of The Summer I Turned Pretty and Mr. And Mrs Smith.
Bar-Haim said that it’s live sports that he sees generating an increasing level of focus and importance into 2025, however, as it’s “probably the last appointment viewing, must-see TV opportunity” where communities come together and are engaged in watching the same program at the same time.
“Every time I come to this country, it's a reminder that there's something particularly unique about Australia and the love for sport here,” he told AdNews.
“We have local, highly relevant sports content that's important to us that we want to continue to pursue – today it's the ICC and cricket and we'll continue to invest in that space - but at an international level, we're also pursuing global rights.
“We just signed an 11-year deal with the NBA: 66 games a season, plus in-season tournaments and playoff games, starting in the 2025-2026, season.”
The ownership of live streaming service Twitch also presents an expansion opportunity for Amazon Ads more broadly, beyond the streaming service of Prime Video.
Nearly 70% of Twitch viewers globally are between the ages of 18 and 34, and on average, there are more than 80 million monthly visitors to the Twitch site globally and over 2.5 million people are tuning in to Twitch at any given moment.
Bar-Haim said that marketers typically have a “really hard time” reaching and engaging with this cohort of the population, but Amazon has found that the community environment for fans that Twitch possesses helps to generate a stickiness and deep engagement with its Millennial and Gen-Z user base.
“I think that probably tells us something about the future of marketing - in many ways, there's going to be an important home for less polished but more authentic and interactive experiences that I think is a really good complement to what you see in the living room via a streaming TV environment,” he said.
“We're also seeing marketers leverage gaming in interesting ways to tell their stories that I don't think we saw a few years ago.”
One example he shared was of the Queensland Government Transport and Main Roads’ campaign to portray responsible road safety towards the end of 2022.
The campaign, featuring Australian streamer TJBirrd playing Minecraft with 300ms ping - the same reaction delay to driving with 0.05 blood alcohol content - resulted in deaths throughout the game, which helped to spark positive conversations online around the dangers of drink driving.
Bar-Haim said it was a clever idea that “was really well received by customers”.
“They saw a lift in traffic of over 300% to their landing page and that's just one example of a marketer thinking differently about how to leverage a gaming environment to tell a story that will resonate with consumers everywhere,” he said.
Amazon reported its advertising business growing 20% to $US12.77 billion in the June quarter, and while the business is still small compared to Amazon’s retailing arm, it’s growing fast, now third in the world behind Google and Meta for digital advertising.
More locally, Amazon Australia reported a 50% increase to $153.36 million in advertising sales in 2023.
Bar-Haim said that the focus for Amazon Ads going forward into 2025 and beyond is living up to the promise of full funnel advertising at scale for everyone, whether that company sell products on Amazon or not.
“We want to help marketers drive more efficiency and effectiveness, and we want to make advertising more relevant and engaging for customers. If we can accomplish both of those things, we'll be very happy,” he said.
“We have a saying at Amazon that ‘it's always day one’ and what we mean by that is whether you're thinking about ecommerce, the streaming space or retail media, there's still so much left to be invented on behalf of customers and that's what motivates us. That's what drives us forward.
“As long as we maintain that mentality, we'll continue to raise the bar on the experience for advertisers and for our customers.”
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