Amazon is pushing deeper into the heart of TV and audio advertising, rolling out a new measurement tool for streamers while tapping iHeartMedia’s 1,000-plus sellers to connect its streaming inventory across more media plans.
In the past week, iHeartMedia has expanded its relationship with Amazon Ads to resell inventory across Twitch, Amazon Music, Fire TV, and Alexa — on top of the Prime Video slots it already resells. At the same time, Amazon has launched Optimizer, a tool that uses Amazon’s shopping, browsing, and streaming data to optimize programmatic guaranteed campaigns in Freewheel. Media partners including Warner Bros. Discovery and A+E Networks are already using it.
Together, these moves represent the latest step in Amazon’s years-long push to build direct data-driven relationships with premium publishers — positioning itself at the center of both how TV and audio inventory is sold and how its performance is measured.
“Our approach is to work directly with the world’s premium publishers, and to use technology as a bridge so that what our advertisers are trying to do can happen more efficiently across all the publishers that we work with,” said Sharmilan Rayer, director of Amazon Publisher Cloud.
iHeartMedia has sold streaming ad inventory for Amazon Prime for the past three years, but the new deal broadens that relationship significantly. The partnership opens up Amazon’s audience data to iHeartMedia’s clients, letting advertisers access Amazon’s shopping, browsing, and streaming signals to reach audiences on iHeartMedia’s digital platforms — including audio, podcasts, and creator-led content.
The shared data is designed to connect audiences across both platforms. “The same person that’s looking to find a product or wanting to buy a product, we can match up and marry it to our own owned and operated assets, so that the advertiser can get that person not only on Amazon’s platform but also on iHeart’s platform too,” said Mike Biondo, president of iHeartMedia.
Industry observers see the deal as a win for both sides. “Amazon clearly wants its data to be the oil across the machines, if not the machine itself,” noted Scott Messer, principal and founder of Messer Media. “It’s a clever move to play the long game and be both platform and infrastructure.”
