Amazon says that Prime Video continues to reach new users in the U.S., as it prepares to roll out new ad tech in connection to its 2025 upfront presentation later today.
The tech giant said Monday that the ad tier of Prime Video now reaches more than 130 million U.S. customers, that is up from 115 million, a number which it revealed last year. The 130 million figure is not the same as a subscriber number (Amazon last revealed Prime subscriber numbers in 2021, when it tallied up over 200 million worldwide), but it gives a sense of reach and scale for its streaming platform.
The company also says that 88 percent of Prime Video viewers have also shopped on Amazon, a stat meant to underscore the direct relationship between watching and buying on the platform.
Prime Video entered the advertising business in a major way last year, flipping on ads for all of its U.S. users (subscribers could also opt out of ads for a small monthly fee), giving it instant scale. The move worked, with ads revenue surging, but it also shook up the entire ad market, flooding it with inventory and sparking grumbles from other streaming players that suddenly had a lot more competition than anticipated.
The company has since been rolling out its ad tier to other markets.
At its initial upfront, the company wowed buyers with a star-studded event, meant to underscore that it meant business. Ahead of the 2025 installment, the company says that it will roll out new artificial intelligence-powered ad tech that its customers will be able to use meant to drive sales of products, both on Amazon and outside of the shopping giant’s walls.
Those products will include AI-generated contextual ad messaging which “auto-generates hyper-relevant ad copy to make ads feel like natural extensions of what viewers are watching”; shoppable ads that incorporate pricing, reviews and Prime shipping info from Amazon, letting users buy the product without ever leaving the content stream; and an expanded suite of interactive formats meant to drive sales off of Amazon, including calls to action like “subscribe now” or “book an appointment,” with info sent to users phones.
“Our ad formats are proven to drive measurable action on and off Amazon,” said Alan Moss, VP of global ads sales for Amazon Ads. “Starting this year, we are introducing a contextual advertising experience that dynamically aligns the ad message with the content viewers are watching – creating a natural and relevant connection. Based on Amazon’s signals and fully addressable and authenticated audiences, we are uniquely positioned to offer viewers scene-aware ads as extensions of the entertainment experience, not interruptions.”
