Amazon rolls out new ad offerings for Fire TV

Amazon Fire TV is rolling out new options for advertisers as connected TV investment continues to climb.

The new offerings, which are expected to roll out now through the end of 2023, represent an expansion of the types of ads available on Fire TV, Charlotte Maines, Amazon’s director of Fire TV advertising, monetization, and engagement, said. They include:

• Allowing managed-service advertisers to buy exclusive inventory on both Fire TV channels and Fire TV devices;
• Expanding inventory to brands outside of the media and entertainment space on Fire TV’s Feature Rotator, an ad unit that appears when users turn on their devices;
• Bundled advertising options that bring Fire TV native display ad inventory into streaming TV campaigns;
• Releasing Search Ads, in which media and entertainment advertisers can appear in sponsored results after users search for content to watch on their device;
• And expanding contextual targeting options that let advertisers select specific genres or opt for machine learning–powered auto-contextualization.

Several of the updates are aimed at helping advertisers target users at the right moment while they’re using Fire TV, Maines said. Search Ads, for example, can help surface sponsored programming recommendations when users are searching for something to watch.

“You could say, ‘Alexa, play the TV show with the guy who plays the lawyer for Breaking Bad’ and you would get the search results of Lucky Hank or Better Call Saul without ever having to remember that actor’s name is Bob Odenkirk,” Maines said.

Go big or go home: The updates come as Fire TV continues pushing into free ad-supported channels and working on growing its customer base. The number of Fire TV channels customers has grown by nearly 800% since the beginning of the year, and monthly hours streamed on Fire TV channels is up 285%, Maines said.

It also comes after Amazon reported $12 billion in ad revenue, a 26% YoY increase.

Amazon has been expanding its streaming and CTV ad capabilities all year. Last week, it debuted sponsored ads for streaming TV at its Unboxed conference in New York City. New Fire TV devices rolled out earlier this year, and Fire TV has seen more integration with Amazon’s Thursday Night Football offering.

The expanded Fire TV ad options are an effort to capitalize on the growth of CTV ads. According to a GroupM forecast, CTV advertising is expected to grow by 13.2% globally this year, and in the US, CTV ad spend is projected to grow by 21.2%, according to Insider Intelligence.

Update 11/02/2023: This piece has been updated to clarify Fire TV channels viewership figures.