How Amazon is pitching NBA ad deals to marketers—behind its live sports upfront strategy

Amazon is positioning itself as a platform for brands to run marketing in and around live sports year-round with NBA games arriving in the fall. The e-commerce giant has begun pitching advertisers packages for its basketball and overall sports coverage, building on its work with the NFL’s “Thursday Night Football” and adding new measurement capabilities. Initial deals push for larger buy-in across its growing slate of live events in order to help advertisers build stronger data connections between Amazon’ media and retail platforms, said Danielle Carney, head of live sports and video sales at Amazon Advertising. Super Bowl ad review The best and worst commercials from the Big Game Click here Last summer, the NBA shook up its roster of broadcast partners. The basketball league dropped longtime partner Warner Bros. Discovery, parent of the TNT cable network, and added NBCUniversal and Amazon to its partners alongside Disney. The deals in total will bring the league about $76 billion over 11 years. Prime Video’s 11-year deal worth $1.8 billion annually includes 66 regular-season games each season as well as a collection of play-in tournament and playoff games. The deal is for U.S. and international streaming and makes Prime Video the host of the NBA’s League Pass add-on subscription, which streams live and on-demand games globally. The combination of NBA content, plus Amazon’s coverage of the NFL’s “Thursday Night Football,” the WNBA, National Women’s Soccer League and Nascar, now give Amazon a host of live events throughout the year. “A lot of our conversations [with advertisers], even those that are kicking off with the NBA, are focused on multi-sports partnerships,” said Carney, adding that Amazon’s upfront strategy is to look at deals across the entire slate rather than in pockets of the year devoted to individual sports. Amazon has also put its stamp on the NBA, adding an NBA Black Friday game to join its NFL matchup on the same day. Carney said the team is using the cross-league double-header to create a full-day event that further engages viewers across both Amazon’s content and retail arms. And Amazon will also have a Christmas Day NFL game this year, which will allow advertisers that partner on both holiday games “to wrap the messaging from the biggest shopping day to kick off the season to the peak of the holiday—a lot of creative thoughts in how we’re partnering across Amazon, particularly with retail,” said Carney. In addition to providing Amazon with more opportunities to sell in-game inventory, the NBA deal will also allow advertisers to retarget consumers through Amazon’s central data platform, Amazon Marketing Cloud, which tracks their journey across streaming and shopping, according to Carney. “If an advertiser uses interactive video ads they see over 25% increase in purchase rates,” said Carney. “Then, take that and apply our audience based creative where we’re allowing our customers to take different segments and audiences and serve them different creative. When you add that, it’s another 15% driving purchase rate.” With the launch of NBA games, Amazon is formally introducing a new first-party measurement capability to track the performance of larger sponsorships in the same way marketers measure 30-second spots. The offering, which Carney said Amazon has been testing in “Thursday Night Football,” will offer audience and outcomes measurement for presenting sponsorships. Whether an in-game billboard or custom sponsorship, Carney said Amazon will be able to track the impact of sponsorships in the same way advertisers are used to seeing metrics for commercials, which will potentially drive larger scale investment in new ad innovation with Amazon. Amazon is able to measure sponsorship-related business outcomes through its visibility into consumer interactions across Amazon touchpoints. Previously, these metrics were measured by third parties; however, “there was not a lot of standardization and not a ton of continuity between how we’re measuring it across different partners, and this allows us to use all of the same data and insights that we have on your 30-second ad creative for your feature,” Carney said. The NBA also presents new opportunities for advertisers to sponsor Amazon’s surrounding content. While the streamer’s “Thursday Night Football” coverage is done on-site, Amazon is building a production studio for NBA programming, which Carney said will eventually be used for other sports as well. “We’re already speaking to partners about how they lean in as we build [the studio] and how we bring them along from the start,” said Carney. “It’s exciting because that doesn’t always happen every year—for us to be able to start our conversations from scratch with partners. We’ve seen a ton of interest already as we enter into our official first look just recently.” ~ ~ ~CLARIFICATION: A previous version of this story incorrectly reported that Amazon would air a Christmas Day NBA game.

How Amazon is pitching NBA ad deals to marketers—behind its live sports upfront strategy

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