Amazon OTT Advertising: Benefits in 2024

If you’ve ever binge-watched a show on Freevee, enjoyed a live stream on Twitch, or used a network app on Fire TV, you’ve seen what’s called over-the-top (OTT) video content. OTT box on Amazon is like streaming TV – it’s when videos are sent directly to you over the internet, skipping the old cable box, and usually shown on your TV.

OTT ads, or streaming TV ads, are the commercials that pop up while you’re watching these videos. These ads give advertisers a way to reach lots of people because more and more viewers are switching to streaming videos on their TVs instead of regular cable or broadcast TV. In this article, we’ll explain what OTT advertising is, talk about the terms used, and show how Amazon Streaming TV and online video ads help brands get their messages out to a big audience.

What Is Amazon OTT Advertising?

Amazon OTT Advertising is a method that lets businesses display their advertisements on streaming TV platforms. Imagine when you watch shows on devices like Amazon Fire TV, and suddenly ads pop up during your viewing time – that’s what OTT Advertising is all about. Advertisers can choose specific groups of people to show their ads to, using factors like age, interests, and more. As many people are now switching to streaming TV, this has become a smart way for companies to share information about their products or services with a wide audience.

In today’s world, where many clients prefer watching TV through the internet on devices like Amazon Fire TV, Amazon OTT Advertising is as a strategy for businesses to showcase their ads. These ads appear while you’re enjoying your favorite shows, but they’re tailored to match certain groups of viewers based on things like how old they are or what they like. Since more and more people are turning to streaming TV these days, using Amazon OTT Advertising lets companies get the word out about what they offer to a big crowd.

How Do Amazon OTT Advertisements Work?

Amazon OTT Advertisements work by placing ads within the streaming videos you watch on platforms like Amazon Fire TV. These ads are tailored to specific groups of viewers, making them more relevant and engaging. Let’s explore how this process unfolds.

Overview of Amazon OTT Advertising Process

The Amazon OTT Advertising process involves several key steps that help advertisers effectively showcase their messages to the right audience:

• Ad Campaign Setup: Advertisers create their ad campaigns on Amazon’s advertising platform, specifying their target audience, budget, and campaign goals.
• Audience Targeting: Using Amazon’s rich user data, advertisers define their target audience based on demographics, interests, behaviors, and more. This ensures ads reach the most relevant viewers.
• Ad Creation: Advertisers design their ads, which could be video or display formats. Compelling visuals and messaging are crucial to capture viewers’ attention.
• Auction and Bidding: Amazon’s auction system determines which ads get shown. Advertisers bid for ad placements, and the highest bidder gets their ad displayed to the selected audience.
• Ad Placement: During streaming, when users watch content on Amazon Fire TV or other devices, the ads are inserted seamlessly into the videos they’re watching.
• Viewer Engagement: Viewers interact with the ads by clicking, watching, or taking desired actions like visiting a website or making a purchase.
• Performance Tracking: Amazon provides data on ad performance, showing metrics like ad views, clicks, engagement rates, and conversions. Advertisers can measure the success of their campaigns.
• Optimization: Based on the collected data, advertisers can refine their campaigns in real time. This might involve adjusting targeting criteria, ad formats, or messaging to improve results.
• Budget Management: Advertisers monitor their budget and adjust spending as needed to maximize the campaign’s effectiveness.
• Reporting: Amazon’s reporting tools offer insights into the campaign’s impact, helping advertisers make informed decisions for future strategies.

Advantages of OTT Advertising

Over-the-top Advertising offers several compelling benefits that make it a powerful tool for modern advertisers. In a world where streaming content has become a dominant form of entertainment, leveraging the advantages of OTT Advertising can lead to effective and impactful campaigns. Let’s delve into these advantages in more detail:

Reaching a Targeted Audience

OTT Advertising allows advertisers to precisely target their desired audience based on factors like demographics, interests, and viewing habits. This personalized approach ensures that ads are shown to the most relevant viewers, increasing the likelihood of engagement and conversions.

Gaining Consumer Insights

By harnessing the data generated from viewer interactions with ads, advertisers can gain valuable insights into ad performance. Metrics like ad views, click-through rates, and viewer engagement provide actionable data for refining strategies and improving future campaigns.

Expanding Audience Reach

OTT Advertising extends beyond the limitations of traditional TV, tapping into the ever-growing population of streaming content enthusiasts. This presents an opportunity for advertisers to connect with a broader and often younger audience, adapting to the changing media consumption landscape.

Cost Savings on Ad Spend

The precise targeting capabilities of OTT Advertising allow advertisers to avoid spending on audiences unlikely to be interested in their offerings. This strategic targeting leads to cost-efficient campaigns where each impression holds higher value.

Building Brand Awareness on and off Amazon

Leveraging OTT Advertising within platforms like Amazon can enhance brand visibility among users. Additionally, due to Amazon’s extensive ecosystem, viewers might explore a brand’s offerings both on and off the platform, potentially resulting in increased sales and brand recognition.

Best Practices for Amazon OTT Ads

Creating effective Amazon OTT Ads requires a strategic approach to engage viewers and achieve campaign objectives. Here are some best practices to consider:

1. Understand Your Audience:

Research and define your target audience based on demographics, interests, and viewing behavior. This ensures that your ads resonate with the right viewers.

2. Craft Compelling Content:

Create visually appealing and engaging ad content that quickly captures viewers’ attention. Deliver a clear message within the first few seconds to make a lasting impression.

3. Tailor for the Platform:

Customize your ads for the Amazon OTT platform, ensuring they seamlessly fit within the viewing experience and align with the platform’s design guidelines.

4. Utilize Precise Targeting:

Leverage Amazon’s data to precisely target your audience. Segment based on factors like age, location, shopping behavior, and preferences for maximum impact.

5. Test Different Ad Formats:

Experiment with various ad formats, such as video ads and display ads, to understand what works best for your campaign goals.

6. Optimize for Mobile:

Remember that many viewers access OTT content on mobile devices. Ensure your ads are optimized for various screen sizes and orientations.

7. Deliver a Clear Call to Action:

Include a compelling and actionable CTA that prompts viewers to take the desired next steps, such as visiting a website or making a purchase.

8. Consider Ad Placement:

Strategically place your ads within content that aligns with your target audience’s interests. Contextual relevance enhances engagement.

9. Test and Iterate:

Continuously monitor ad performance and gather data on metrics like engagement rates and conversions. Use this data to refine your strategy over time.

10. Feedback Management

Integrate feedback management tools like SageMailer to collect viewer insights, evaluate engagement patterns, and refine future campaigns. Feedback can guide content adjustments, leading to more resonant and impactful ads.

With SageMailer, you can manage all buyer feedback, star ratings, and reviews in a single place with our round-the-clock review monitoring feature. AMZ review tracker tracks ASINs and sends instant notifications so you stay fully aware of your customers’ experience.

Ready to try? Sign up for a free 30-day trial to explore SageMailer’s features and benefits for your business. 

How to Get Started with Amazon OTT?

As the world of advertising shifts towards streaming platforms, Amazon OTT provides a dynamic way to reach audiences. Whether you’re new to OTT or seeking to enhance your strategy, here’s a step-by-step guide to kickstart your Amazon OTT Advertising journey:

Setting Goals and KPIs

Begin by outlining your campaign’s objectives. Define what you want to achieve – be it increased brand visibility, website visits, or product sales. Establish key performance indicators (KPIs) that will help you measure the success of your efforts.

Identifying Audience Segments

Know your audience well. Utilize Amazon’s audience insights to segment your viewers based on demographics, interests, and viewing habits. This segmentation ensures your ads resonate with the right people.

Submitting Your Ad

Create compelling ad content that aligns with your campaign goals. Adhere to Amazon’s guidelines and specifications for ad format and quality. Once your ad is ready, submit it through Amazon’s advertising platform.

Testing and Optimization

Continuously test different aspects of your ads, such as visuals, messaging, and calls to action. Monitor performance metrics to gauge engagement and conversions. Based on data insights, optimize your campaign in real time for better results.

Amazon OTT Advertising Example

Quest Nutrition has a strong following, but they wanted to attract new fans. They turned to streaming TV ads using Amazon Advertising. With these ads, Quest Nutrition saw an 8.5x increase in branded shopping queries and a 49% rise in product detail page views compared to the previous month, showing that their strategy worked in boosting brand awareness and engaging viewers.

How to Measure Success with OTT?

Exploring the realm of measurement research offers various avenues to connect advertising expenditures with outcomes. Here are instances of how you can leverage a blend of unique first-party and third-party measurements to establish correlations:

Brand Reach

Building brand recognition necessitates reaching a wide spectrum of demographics. Evolving video technologies have revolutionized content consumption habits. In 2020, the average daily online video consumption in the US was around 140 minutes. Evaluating brand reach can gauge the effectiveness of your OTT video ad endeavors.

Brand Lift

Collaborating with third-party measurement partners enables you to assess the brand lift facilitated by OTT advertisements. This strategy significantly enhances brand awareness among viewers. Does my OTT advertising strategy reshape how the audience perceives my brand? Queries like these find answers through brand lift analysis.

Branded Search and Analytics for New Brands

While traditional TV advertising wields the potency to convey messages to a broad audience, deciphering its impact on actual purchases can pose challenges. AMZ Streaming TV ads offer specialized analytics such as branded search and new-to-brand insights. These tools illuminate post-advertisement customer actions on Amazon, offering insights into consumer behavior after exposure.

Website Visits

If you run an AMZ store, comprehending how marketing influences consumer engagement with your products is pivotal. This entails calculating metrics like detail pages viewed and page detail visit rates. These metrics permit the quantification of pre- and post-OTT Amazon Streaming TV ad strategies’ impacts on product detail page views. This analysis aids in determining whether marketing efforts have increased traffic to product information pages.

Who Is Eligible for Amazon OTT Ads?

The DSP platform empowers self-service users to independently manage their video streaming campaigns. However, there’s also an avenue for brands to collaborate with Amazon-approved ad consultants if needed.

In essence, eligibility for OTT ads extends to AMZ 1P and 3P sellers, as well as marketing agencies. The pivotal consideration then revolves around the financial aspect.

Brands that prefer self-service can allocate their tailored budget for OTT ads. Conversely, for managed services, AMZ stipulates a minimum spend of $15,000.

It’s worth noting that this budget might not align with the resources of all sellers. The silver lining lies in Amazon’s diverse advertising options, such as Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and the additional edge of Sponsored Display ads. This flexibility caters to various budgets and goals.

How Much Do Streaming TV Ads Cost?

With streaming and OTT ads becoming popular, small businesses can now compete with big companies on TV. You can start with a budget of about $2000/month and adjust it based on how your ads are doing.

OTT advertising usually costs between $25 to $40 for every 1000 views of your ad. This means you only pay when people watch your ad. Traditional TV ads can be more expensive, ranging from $40 to $200 or even more. Unlike OTT ads, you can’t track who sees your TV ad. OTT ads are better because they let you spend money more efficiently.

Latest Changes and Added Features for Amazon OTT

In November 2022, Amazon initiated several alterations aimed at enhancing their OTT advertising landscape. These modifications encompassed the introduction of fresh content offerings and innovative tools designed to bolster advertisers’ brand-building endeavors. Let’s delve into the specifics of these changes:

Introduction of New Content

Amazon expanded its content repertoire across platforms like IMDb TV and Amazon Prime Video. This augmentation involved the inclusion of new movies and supplementary content for NFL Thursday night football broadcasts. These additions significantly widen the scope for advertisements to reach a more diverse and extensive viewership.

Genre Blocking Feature

A significant feature introduced in September of the prior year, genre blocking, grants advertisers greater command over ad placement. This tool empowers advertisers to block up to five content genres, ensuring that their ads solely appear within genres relevant to their target audience. This precision ensures impressions from the intended demographic.

Audience Guarantees

Amazon’s audience guarantee proposition offers advertisers the choice to procure ads solely for their desired audience segment. This mechanism translates to advertisers paying only for impressions that effectively resonate with their specific product and brand demographics.

Video Creative Builder Beta

The video creative builder beta is a noteworthy inclusion that empowers advertisers to craft video ads from scratch, even without their original video assets. Advertisers can tap into Amazon’s collection of videos and templates, facilitating experimentation with diverse ad concepts without expending excessive time and resources.

These strategic updates by Amazon underscore their commitment to refining the OTT advertising experience, affording advertisers enhanced opportunities for impactful outreach and engagement.

Conclusion 

If you’re searching for a way to connect with a captivated audience through ads, consider Amazon OTT advertising as an alternative to traditional TV ads. Thanks to its precise targeting and ads that viewers can’t skip, your message gets noticed and heard effectively. Keep an eye on reach, brand search, and brand lift metrics to gauge how well your campaign is doing.

Remember, AMZ is more than just OTT; it’s a big platform for shopping and digital content. This means you have many options for advertising on the platform, so don’t hesitate to try new things!

And don’t forget, using tools like SageMailer for feedback management can help enhance the impact of your Amazon OTT ads by listening to viewers’ opinions.