• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, Yesterday

How much more TV/CTV disruption can we stand?

A potentially big streaming advertising shakeup seems likely in the wake of Roku and Amazon's eye-opening CTV ad deal with Amazon DSP, according to one analyst.

“Stunning,” says Daniel Kurnos, media analyst with Benchmark.

The logic here is that it's not just Roku making another demand-side platform deal. This deal is with Amazon DSP, a business from the big e-commence platform, which can offer up a plethora of other advertising, marketing, content businesses above and beyond a programmatic advertising platform for brands big and small.

Amazon DSP is now expanding quickly to pull in non-Amazon-owned CTV advertising business, looking to compete in a big way against demand-side platform The Trade Desk and others.

So what is so “exclusive” about the deal?

Michael Morris, media analyst of Guggenheim Securities, opines that: “The ‘exclusivity’ element of the agreement pertains to the ability to use first-party Roku viewer data for targeting across inventory purchases -- beyond Roku's first party inventory.”

He adds: “We expect Roku is incrementally benefitting from making this data available.” However, he cautions that “it is unclear for how long the exclusivity period will extend.”

It's not just for Roku and Amazon. Kurnos sees Roku's other major partner Magnite, the big supply-side advertising platform “who remains Roku's preferred SSP partner and who should see incremental volume from this deal through their pipes.”

Roku now has deals with the four largest DSPs, including Amazon DSP, Google DV360 and The Trade Desk. At the same time, Roku continues to move along with its mostly “agnostic” position with all its DSPs.

In that regard, Kurnos expects a growing Roku will also result in a stronger Google demand-side platform connection. “We think this deal augurs well for a DV360 integration in the near-medium-term.”

On the same day the Roku/Amazon deal was announced -- at the start of Cannes Lions -- a Yahoo-Netflix DSP deal was"also disclosed.

Sure, competition is heating up. But watch the bigger players looking to flex even more muscle in the space. The word "stunning" may be the least of it.