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After shaking up last year’s upfront following the debut of ads on Prime Video, Amazon took a page from Arnold Schwarzenegger and said, “I’ll be back.”
This week, in Amazon’s second upfront presentation, the company dropped big engagement numbers, sharing that Amazon’s monthly ad-supported audience now reaches over 300 million across its platforms in the U.S.; revealed new adtech, including AI-generated pause ads; brought out a who’s who of celebrities, such as Michael B. Jordan, Jason Momoa, Candace Parker, Travis and Jason Kelce, and Jamie Lee Curtis; and showcased its newly expanded sports slate, which adds the NBA and NASCAR to properties such as Thursday Night Football and the WNBA.
Schwarzenegger even made an appearance, apparently going off-script for over 10 minutes while reminiscing about True Lies with Jamie Lee Curtis; talking about his upcoming Amazon Prime Video holiday movie, the Man With the Bag; and explaining that with age he’s traded in his iconic “I’ll be back” phrase for, “Ow, my back!”
Following ADWEEK’s upfront postmortem chats with NBCUniversal and Fox, we spoke with Alan Moss, vice president, global advertising sales at Amazon, to hear more about the company’s approach to this upfront season, the details behind the AI-generating ad formats, and just how much of that Schwarzenegger moment was planned.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
ADWEEK: At last year’s Amazon event, you had Alicia Keys performing at 10 in the morning, and there were big names like Jake Gyllenhaal and Reese Witherspoon. This year, you still had plenty of celebrities and content announcements, but there were also more adtech updates. Can you talk about the approach?
Moss: This year, it was important that, again, we showcased the incredible talent, the amazing programming, the live sports that we have to offer in the coming broadcast year across the Amazon canvas, but we’re Amazon, and advertisers expect more from us. Our roots are in innovation and inventing. I tried to convey that in my conversation, that we’re just getting started. While we’ve built and invented in ways that we’re proud of, it’s what we’ll build next that’s most exciting for us.
We were excited to highlight our differentiating adtech possibilities and how we’re trying to make it for advertisers. I said, “Make it simple; make it relevant; and make it yours.” We think there are great opportunities for our partners to make it theirs in unique ways, in the way that they integrate with us. I’m proud of the way we delivered for our customers earlier this week, both making sure that was a entertaining and memorable evening, but also the clarity that we’re able to provide around the best-in-class full-funnel offering, that we provide a clear reason to believe that our advertising works and can drive sales.
The Arnold moment was one of the highlights from the show. What was that like for you since you were set to go on next?
Personally, it was pretty awesome to be introduced on stage by Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis, both incredible icons, reliving True Lies. You could just see how much they cared about one another, their relationship, and their authenticity. They were authentically excited to be on stage with us. They had the crowd on the edge of their seat. I had the opportunity to talk to both of them backstage. Both of them are incredible marketers. You think about Arnold and the number of careers he’s had. I think they brought a lot of credibility, too.
How much of that was scripted vs. unscripted?
I don’t think it’s any surprise to anyone who was there that Arnold was unscripted, and Arnold was Arnold. I think it was awesome. It was delightful. You got to see authentically how excited he is about his new movie, The Man with the Bag. You got to see how excited he is to be working with Amazon, and how much he believed. It’s hard for me to hear when you’re on the side of the stage. You can’t hear everything, but I heard a few sound bites, and I think he brought great energy around how important it is to get out there, tell your story, and authentically connect with audiences, whether you’re trying to fill seats in the theater or sell and launch your new product on Amazon. I think both he and Jamie get it and also made “full-funnel” fun and memorable.
So you’ve mentioned the adtech. One of the things you introduced was AI-generated pause ads, which are generated to be contextually relevant to the show and the moment you’re watching. How complex are these?
Now, with AI being able to understand the context of a scene, and because of that understanding, [it’s] able to generate content that would then resonate when someone might pause and show something relevant. On Monday night, I use the example of T-Mobile and the case with The Summer I Turned Pretty, a heart-to-heart conversation between Belly, one of the characters, and her mom, and T-Mobile sharing how they make heart-to-heart conversations possible with their great network. You could imagine similarly—and we’ve done this with other advertisers for travel—shows that are set in exotic locations, perhaps someplace in Italy where there’s a cooking show going on. Then, showing a relevant ad to visit that city in Italy. Those are the things that are now possible.
We have experience with that in initial tests, and now AI technology, it’s the capability of being able to scale that. As I said, this is moving from genre to scene-specific relevance. We’ve focused on, if we can make the ad experience more relevant to viewers, we find that we get great growth and that they don’t mind ads. They understand that it helps to provide funding and more investment in great content. I think that’s why we see some of the strong growth that we’re seeing.
You shared a lot of big numbers on that growth, including the 300 million monthly active users. Can you talk about the strategy that led to that engagement?
One message out there was to let folks know that we are seeing strong growth. That’s reinforcing our fundamental belief that when you get advertising right, customers benefit too. And this growth means that advertisers no longer are going to have to choose between scale or precision, creativity or performance, and branding or sales.
When we spoke previously, you said you prioritize ad engagement over ad load. Is that what you credit that increased engagement to, and is that the strategy moving forward?
Absolutely. We’re customer-obsessed. It’s not just a saying for us. We’re thinking about and we sweat the details of the consumer experience, how it can evolve. With a streaming service like ours that is so expansive with such premium inventory, what can we do to improve the ad experience, to make sure it’s relevant, to delight customers along the way? We do think things like shoppable ads can allow them to get some of their shopping done, add to cart, and get on with their life, or pause ads can be relevant to what they’re watching.
That, to me, is the future, and that’s what we’re focused on. If we do that right, it won’t be an ad volume game. It’s going to be much more about authentic connections, ad relevance, and delivering value, both for the consumer and the advertiser.
This was Amazon’s second year in the upfront. Will you be back next year?
[Laughs] We just got done with this year, Bill. I appreciate that.
In terms of next year, what I’d say is I’m incredibly pleased with the feedback. We’ve heard from lots of customer meetings this week with advertisers and agency partners, as you’d imagine. We’ve heard from them that the upfront showed the great breadth of what we’re doing, and how we’re helping customers execute a full-funnel approach and make it simpler. And they’ve commented on the shift that they see in consumer behavior moving towards Amazon.
I think you can expect us to be back. There is something about the upfronts and getting your message out. But the best part of all this is about working with our new and existing customers, helping them to realize these benefits. For next year—really depend on what we’re hearing from customers, understanding further what their opportunities are, what their challenges are, listening to them, and working backwards to help them solve meaningful business [decisions] and execute on them.
Correction: This story has been updated to note that Amazon has 300 million monthly active users across its platforms in the U.S. A previous version attributed the stat to Prime Video.
