Exclusive: Amazon Closes First Upfront, Shaking Up the TV Market

Amazon has big ambitions to shake up the TV industry, starting with this year's upfront. ADWEEK has exclusively learned that Amazon has wrapped its first TV upfront season, pitching its scale, data, and new ad-supported tier for Prime Video to advertisers. While Amazon played up shows like The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power and a Legally Blonde prequel starring Reese Witherspoon, advertisers cited Amazon’s scale and lower ad prices as the main factors that went into securing yearlong TV deals with the ecommerce giant. A spokesperson for Amazon confirmed that the company has closed its TV negotiations. The spokesperson said Amazon finalized agreements with all of the major holding companies as well as independent agencies, noting particular growth with automotive, financial services, CPG, entertainment, and hospitality advertisers. “We’ve seen positive feedback from agencies and brands leading to strong demand following our first upfront with Prime Video ads,” according to the Amazon spokesperson. “We’ve had agencies and brands lean into our comprehensive offering of premium content, first-party insights, and innovative ad tech across Amazon’s streaming portfolio, including Prime Video, Twitch, Freevee, Fire TV Channels, IMDb, Amazon Music, and Wondery.” The company did not reveal the total volume or CPMs (cost per thousand viewers reached). With the news, Amazon joins the other upfront week presenters, including Disney, Fox, Warner Bros. Discovery, NBCUniversal, Netflix, and TelevisaUnivision, in wrapping upfront talks. ADWEEK spoke with seven ad buyers who went through upfront negotiations with Amazon about the company's pitch. The ad buyers spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the details of their negotiations with Amazon. Some ad buyers said that Amazon took a bigger share of budgets in the first year of the upfronts than streaming competitors like Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery-owned Max did during their respective first years. One ad buyer described their spending with Amazon as among the top five media companies vying for upfront ad dollars, behind companies including Hulu, Peacock, and Disney+. Those deals tend to have bigger spending because they include linear TV ads in addition to streaming. The ad buyer said that Amazon won a bigger share of budgets than several streaming-focused players, including Netflix, Max, and Fox’s Tubi. “When Netflix and Disney+ launched, people dipped their toe in,” the ad buyer said. “With Amazon, they’ve garnered more share as a first-year upfront player than the competition.” Amazon is beating Netflix on scale Amazon reports its ad-supported Prime Video tier has around 115 million ad-supported U.S. viewers (and more than 200 million worldwide), giving advertisers significantly more scale than Netflix’s 40 million ad-supported monthly active users. That size is appealing to advertisers who are increasingly struggling to find big audiences in streaming. “You can't put that much supply in the marketplace and expect it to not have an impact,” said a second ad buyer. “We knew that when we did our deal last year with them—they did everybody a favor, at least from a buying standpoint.” In terms of original content, ad buyers said that Netflix’s steady slate of premium content beats Amazon. But ad buyers have a peek at a quarterly roadmap of upcoming content, showing that Amazon has a schedule of upcoming content, said a second ad buyer who has been pitched by Amazon. “It’s not Netflix, but you can see the premium content that’s there,” the person said. “The data will tell you that their audience reach is commensurate with the largest players in the streaming universe.” One concern that advertisers have is that people aren’t spending as much time watching Amazon’s content as competitors. While Amazon claims a large footprint of monthly users, watch time on Amazon’s content was lower than Disney, YouTube, NBCUniversal, and Netflix in April, according to Nielsen. Amazon pushed down streaming prices Two ad buyers pegged Amazon’s CPMs between $20 and $25. Ad agencies negotiate specific packages for advertisers, meaning that prices can fluctuate based on how much advertisers spend. Multiple ad buyers credited Amazon’s rollout of an ad tier for Prime Video as lowering ad prices across the board. For example, ADWEEK previously reported that Netflix has significantly lowered its CPMs to meet Amazon’s pricing. “Amazon is probably the biggest factor in lower prices,” said the first ad buyer. “We’re thinking of prices coming down as a reset—the market changed dramatically, and there’s a reset.” A third ad buyer added that the price drops can also be attributed to broader changes like people signing up for more ad-supported streaming services over subscription-based services. The flood of ad-supported content makes it easier for advertisers to reach people but forces media companies to differentiate themselves through incentives for ad buyers. “The supply feels infinite to the dollars in the upfront marketplace, and therefore it becomes a share game of who can incentivize us the highest to place our money,” said a fourth ad buyer about Amazon’s launch of Prime Video. The ad buyer added that Amazon’s pricing is higher than other streamers and said that advertisers are still gauging the performance of Prime Video. Amazon also pitches the ability for brands to track sales on its platform after people see an ad, which can contribute to higher asks on prices, the person said. “It was a lot of evaluation for the potential power of Prime Video—not necessarily knowing if it is a performance place where clients want to be,” the ad buyer said. “That held up some of our discussions with Amazon as a whole.” Amazon wants to be a sports giant Buyers said the different divisions within Amazon negotiated separately, making it somewhat harder to manage. However, Amazon’s growing sports ambitions did play a role in upfront deals in changing Amazon’s perception as a top streamer, according to ad buyers. This year marks the third year of Amazon’s exclusive rights to Thursday Night Football. Amazon has told ad buyers that its streaming rights to the NFL are almost sold out. Amazon has sold 90% of advertising opportunities within Thursday Night Football games, according to four ad buyers. Amazon also acquired some rights to stream NBA games starting in the 2025-2026 season as part of an 11-year deal worth $76 billion that also includes Disney’s ESPN and NBCUniversal. Amazon also has rights to sports like NASCAR and WNBA games. A fifth ad buyer described this split with separate deals for sports and Amazon’s other content as a challenge. This person said that advertisers want to buy ads across all properties with one buy. “On our side, we want to be able to leverage all of those things together and have one conversation and make sure that we're leveraging the clients’ spend to make sure that we're getting the best value for it,” the person said.