• by Karlene Lukovitz , November 2, 2023

Amazon is introducing advertising offerings that include expanded buying options and availability of home screen inventory, contextual ad placements, CTV bundles and other options.

Fire TV homescreen units, up to now reserved for promotions by media and entertainment brands, have been opened up to all advertiser categories.

Advertisers can now buy the lead placement in the Feature Rotator within the hero area on the homescreen — the dominant, large-format, highly visible top-of-screen unit that stays on-screen as users continue to browse for content. Advertisers can opt to have interactive features in the format, such as videos that auto-play when a viewer clicks or hovers on the ad.

Amazon says that on-TV placements — seen by the millions of users who watch only ad-free content, as well as those who opt for ad-supported content — up incremental reach by 125% when added to streaming TV campaigns. They also drove a 153% year-over-year lift in retail brand awareness compared to solo streaming buys.

Amazon is also adding sponsored tiles, limited to media and entertainment advertisers, that appear within Fire TV search results. The tiles can be targeted by genre.

For the first time, managed-service advertisers can now buy exclusive Amazon inventory across ad-supported content on Fire TV, including exclusive deals across Fire TV sticks, cubes and smart TVs and buys on TCL and other TVs with Fire OS integrations.

There are more than 200 million active Fire TV devices globally. Fire TV touts its ability to reach viewers not reached by smart TV rivals, saying its overlap with Samsung devices is 23%, and its overlaps with LG and Roku device users are just 10% and 8%, respectively.

In addition, advertisers can now make exclusive direct buys across Fire TV Channels allowing for run-of-service placement on the FAST service’s content.

Fire TV has been expanding content to increase viewership. That includes Fire TV Channels, which has expanded its short-form video content across categories ranging from sports and news to gaming, travel and music since its launch in October 2022 and debut at the Newfronts in May 2023. Fire TV Channels increased users eightfold and tripled monthly streaming hours between January and September of this year, according to Amazon.

Fire TV has also added a connected TV bundle option allowing advertisers to add native display ads to other Amazon streaming buys. Amazon has not yet commented on whether Prime Video inventory will be an option within such bundles once that flagship streamer starts taking ads next year.

New capabilities for Fire TV users will also benefit advertisers. For example, enhanced AI-driven voice search, slated to launch before year-end, will allow users to use conversational queries to find content, and advertisers will be able to pay for sponsored tiles that appear when searches relate to content genres they are targeting.

Another sponsored tiles option allows either for focusing on genres a brand wants to target or using Amazon’s machine-learning service to auto-contextualize display-ad placements for them as users browse or initiate searches.

Over time, Amazon also plans to expand Fire TV targeting capabilities over time by layering on more of its massive first-party consumer data.