• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, October 25, 2023

Amazon Ads announced a self-service advertising system that allows brands that sell goods on Amazon to reach more customers using the company’s streaming TV services.

Sponsored TV expands the Amazon Sponsor Ads product, which serves product ads in online searches. The tool will support Amazon Ads on Amazon Freevee, Twitch, as well as streaming channels offered through Fire TV apps.

Ruslana Zbagerska, vice president at Amazon Ads, announced the offering Wednesday at Amazon Ads unBoxed 2023 in New York.

“Many brands have not had the opportunity to take advantage of TV advertising,” she said. “Maybe because of spend minimums or lack of relevant creative assets.”

That will change, she said -- engaging more consumers on a larger screen in living rooms through this self-service solution with no up-front commitments and no minimum spend requirements. It helps to engage customers through an interactive ad format.

Search agencies and platforms have tried to encourage smaller brands that may be intimidated by the cost of TV advertising to explore advertising on streaming television. This may become the support needed for the industry to make the move.

Amazon also offers creative services — Creative Studio and AI tools -- to support campaigns. All Sponsored TV campaigns are powered by Amazon’s machine learning (ML) technology.

Amazon has run tests of Sponsored TV with several Amazon clients, with successful results. In one example a brand expanded its advertising to streaming TV using its existing creative.

Eight months after launch, the brand saw an increase of four times increase in branded searches compared to what it had with web advertising alone.

Amazon continues to grow its TV advertising business, but Zbagerska did not elaborate on whether Prime Video inventory would be available through Sponsored TV in the future.