How Amazon restricts access to data from connected TV apps

Amazon has been quietly taking a page from the Apple playbook by restricting advertising data from leaking out of its owned-and-operated connected TV apps such as IMDb TV and Twitch. Advertisers, digital video ad tech providers and developers say that the e-commerce giant has been erecting new barriers to viewer data through its connected TV apps, such as masking the internet protocol addresses of viewers. The development mirrors some of the moves from Apple in the past year. Apple has restricted web publishers and internet ad companies from using cookies, device IDs, and most recently IP addresses to identify consumers on their screens and build profiles on them to target ads. Amazon is taking a similar approach on connected TVs, where it controls its own apps and Fire TV software, according to ad industry insiders. Amazon now masks the IP addresses when it shares data about ad campaigns on IMDb TV, which is a standalone app and available through the Prime Video app, and Twitch, the live-streaming app. IP addresses had been a signal that was easily detected by third-party ad networks and other marketing technology partners, which work with many of the brands on connected TV advertising. Now, Amazon masks the addresses of viewers on its CTV apps by stripping out the information through its ad servers that talk with outside parties. It is a subtle but potentially significant change, according to advertisers. Without the addresses, the effect could be similar to what advertisers have seen on Apple devices, where less consumer data means diminished capacity to collect advertising metrics, such as how often someone viewed an ad. That data can be crucial information in the CTV space, where marketers want to understand how often their commercials are seen by the same person, and control how often the ad is served to the same viewer, a tactic known as “frequency capping.” “It could have a pretty wide impact,” says Tal Chalozin, chief technology officer at Innovid, a digital video ad tech platform. “If you’re a marketer looking to engage frequency capping, then you don’t know anything about the home, so it’s harder to do that. All parties are not getting as good of a result as they wanted. Marketers would like to see the data; tech providers rely on it to sell products; for media companies, it makes it harder for them to do targeting, they can’t release the most relevant ads.” Amazon, of course, has its own first-party ad network, where it can still control frequency capping and ad targeting, and some advertisers see its new policies as another way to reinforce its growing advertising business. The IP addresses of viewers on IMDb TV and Twitch are potentially valuable commodities, too, because they could provide a way to covertly develop consumer profiles that have a good chance of matching up with Amazon shoppers and Amazon Prime members. That's the type of data that Amazon would like to have a strong hand controlling. “Amazon is not going to want someone to pull down an IP address to map it back to an Amazon profile, to a piece of personal information, that would be huge breach of privacy,” says one major advertising agency executive, speaking on condition of anonymity. Amazon declined to comment for this story but it pointed to its advertising policies that outline its developer and data rules. On Fire TV, which is the broader Amazon CTV software ecosystem, Amazon has had policies for years about limiting the exposure of IP addresses from third-party apps. Amazon encourages developers and media companies on Fire TV to use its Amazon Advertising ID as opposed to other data like IP addresses. "Under our Appstore Advertising ID Policy, third-party apps that collect information about users’ behaviors in order to display interest-based ads must use the Amazon Advertising ID,” Amazon said. “No other identifier or tracking method (e.g., Android ID or IP address) may be used. Customers can reset their Advertising ID or use the interest-based ads setting on their device to manage their advertising preferences.” The Amazon Advertising ID is a unique code for each viewer generated by Amazon Fire software. “If you collect information about a user’s behavior to display interest-based ads, or to generate analytics, you must use the Advertising ID,” Amazon says in its policies. Amazon’s steps are in line with the privacy movement taking hold in the internet advertising industry. Companies that have thrived through unfettered access to data, like being able to peek into people’s IP addresses to follow their web histories and serve targeted ads, are finding it more difficult to do business. Amazon’s ad revenue reached $8 billion in the second quarter, growing 87% year over year. Connected TV is an increasingly important pillar in that ad business, as Amazon runs Fire TV, Prime Video, IMDb TV and Twitch. The Fire TV ecosystem is a complex one, where Amazon operates its own apps and distributes apps from major media companies. Amazon also has lucrative sports deals like one to exclusively stream Thursday Night Football starting in 2022. And just this month, Amazon’s TV portfolio expanded with the release of its first Fire TV set—so it became an original manufacturer of TVs and not just a software partner to other manufacturers. The changes are considered a win for privacy, but they could also give big tech platforms even more of an advantage since they still have access to data that is now being denied to other players. “It would strengthen Amazon’s own walled garden,” says Nirish Parsad, practice lead, privacy, identity and martech at Tinuiti, a performance marketing agency. Subscribe to Ad Age now for the latest industry news and analysis.

How Amazon restricts access to data from connected TV apps

Featured Stories