With one year in the books, Amazon Ads leaders discuss the future of Prime Video ads

In January 2024, Amazon introduced ads to Prime Video offering marketers the opportunity to advertise across its full slate of premium content including Original series and films.

The launch instantly made Prime Video the largest global premium ad-supported streaming service. Prime Video has an average monthly ad-supported reach of more than 115 million customers in the U.S., and more than 200 million globally. With a suite of customer-focused product offerings, measurement solutions, and innovative ad tech, Amazon sought to create a relevant advertising experience for its streaming audiences, while delivering full-funnel, measurable results for advertisers, from brand awareness to conversion.

We sat down with Vice President of Prime Video Advertising Jeremy Helfand and Vice President of Global Video Advertising Krishan Bhatia to discuss the first year of Prime Video ads, and what’s ahead in 2025.

JEREMY HELFAND: There was an opportunity to create a real win-win for both new and existing advertisers, as well as our viewers. With the introduction of ads, we saw a way for Prime Video to continue investing in compelling content, in addition to offering our customers greater breadth and depth of their favorite programming.

KRISHAN BHATIA: Amazon Ads offers powerful ad tech solutions, informed by first-party streaming, shopping, and browsing signals that make it easier for advertisers to drive results across the planning and activation stages of their streaming campaigns. Putting ads in Prime Video allowed us to build on that differentiator in the marketplace and offer a premium advertising solution.

KRISHAN BHATIA: We’ve reached a very pivotal moment this year. We're now at a point where nearly 50% of TV and video viewing in the U.S. is happening on streaming services.¹ That's a bright future for streaming TV because it suggests there's healthy industry growth ahead. Advertisers want to invest in streaming TV content experiences because that is where the viewers are.

JEREMY HELFAND: How TV content is consumed has fundamentally changed, but advertising has not. With Prime Video advertising, we have the potential to deliver a more relevant, more functional, more integrated experience for brands. Through that, we aim to deliver a higher return on investment for our ad partners. That said, we also offer an ad-free pricing tier to allow customers to create the experience they want, if they happen to prefer an ad-free experience.

JEREMY HELFAND: There’s the combination of scaled audiences and reach included in our portfolio of premium content. When you combine that with the trillions of first-party signals, we uniquely understand what customers watch and buy. This creates opportunities for advertisers to activate against those first-party signals with our ad tech in a full-funnel way and puts us in position to lead where advertising should go in streaming tv. From a customer perspective, we aim to leverage this differentiation for a more relevant and less-disruptive streaming tv viewing experience.

KRISHAN BHATIA: Advertisers know what premium content looks like, and the deeper we can marry our consumer insights, ad products, and integration opportunities with the audiences they are looking to reach, the more we are able to establish ourselves as a differentiated streaming service. That's the marriage of art and science. From sponsorship opportunities that drive a deeper brand connection with viewers to clean rooms that enable segments leveraging our customer insights alongside our viewership and behavioral insights, we can align marketers more deeply with fan-favorite series, films, and live sports.

KRISHAN BHATIA: Amazon has long been a leader in retail media advertising in our stores, which drives immediate impact for brands. We know that building brands does not always result in immediate impulse buys and store sales. Now, with Prime Video ads, we can expand upon our retail offering and add top-of-the-funnel brand awareness to the mix in a really unique way. There are not a lot of companies that have the ability to do both–performance measurement and brand awareness measurement through television at scale.

JEREMY HELFAND: We start with the customer when developing our ad offerings. We are focused on more relevancy, less interruption, and ways to help brands more deeply integrate into the content. Reimagining ad formats is one way to achieve this given the expanded functionality that now exists in the living room. This also includes taking real-time signals back from customers as they're viewing their favorite shows and experience advertising.

KRISHAN BHATIA: We've launched four interactive formats including the shoppable carousel and interactive pause ads, and we're working with Jeremy's team to continue to launch new product innovations every year.

JEREMY HELFAND: The most powerful thing about shoppable advertising with Prime Video is the seamless way customers can add a product into their carts and purchase, or with a click of the remote be able to learn more about a brand. That is something that is unique to Amazon. We are focused on providing a frictionless experience where audiences can move from TV screen to mobile device, and into the shopping cart.

KRISHAN BHATIA: We’re consistently developing innovations for our customers across product offerings, measurement solutions, and ad tech. Some of it will be testing and experimentation to see what consumers adopt and what creates brand resonance. The ability to do that at global scale and also in multiple international markets is something that no other company can do. We want to really define what ad-supporting streaming TV looks like with every move we make.

JEREMY HELFAND: Innovation is at the heart of Amazon and that extends to Prime Video ads. We have a tremendous opportunity to democratize TV advertising. By that, I mean accessing Amazon’s audiences across our many channels and pathways, and delivering accountable ad experiences for advertisers of all sizes on Prime Video, from enterprise to SMB. We strive to offer a full suite of formats and experiences, from sponsorship to brand integration, as well as helping advertisers leverage insights and measurement to deliver full-funnel advertising. We are just getting started.