The Proof Is In The Prime
Amazon has for the past year or so been peacocking itself (not an NBCU reference, lol) as an unmissable streaming media investment. 2026 will be no different.
Its latest pitch deck for advertisers, which was shared with Digiday, boasts about its closed-loop attribution, which is fueled by first-party transaction data and its reach across Prime Video, Fire TV, Twitch and Amazon Publisher Direct.
Marketers are being pressured to justify every media dollar. Amazon is positioning its Marketing Cloud as a straightforward way to tie TV impressions to conversions. As Digiday points out, Amazon’s TV ad demand growth is likely mostly thanks to its growing reputation as a “proof layer,” rather than any affection advertisers have for Amazon itself.
Buyers remain wary of Amazon as a walled garden, and one with limited visibility across non-Amazon publishers. Some advertisers say Amazon struggles with frequency capping, for instance, as per Digiday, which could be due to Amazon’s emphasis on its owned properties rather than the wider web or other platforms.
For now, buyers are prepared to spend more with Amazon because it represents a defensible TV investment that will placate the CRO. But the long-term growth of Amazon’s TV ad biz may very well depend on whether the company can address the industry’s larger pain points.
OpenA Can Of Worms
The world is waiting on OpenAI to launch an ad business. Its combination of data, attention and proximity to purchase decisions makes ChatGPT Ads practically inevitable.
And signs suggest that shift is already underway.
OpenAI has told investors that nonpaying user revenue will go from $2 per person by the end of this year to $15 per person by 2030. The estimates call for nonpaying user revenue (advertising plus commissions on purchases using ChatGPT) to total about $46 billion in 2030.
But OpenAI faces structural roadblocks.
For one, as The Information reports, OpenAI indexes to global users, rather than a US base. That’s tricky for ad revenue.
Also, OpenAI isn’t necessarily a great fit for ad impressions, considering the layout of the chatbot window, minimal outbound links, no social engagement, no long video content and no viral feed.
Google Search, by comparison, is chockablock with ads, and it’s got surfaces galore to play with. Who’s to say, for example, that it won’t add a Google Maps sidebar with sponsored elements to its AI search experience or maybe even a product shopping carousel. Not to mention YouTube.
OpenAI has the users and the data, but not so much the media.
Check This Out!
In other AI news, Microsoft Copilot is rolling out a new feature that allows shoppers to make purchases directly in the chatbot, Search Engine Land reports.
Copilot is also introducing a feature called Brand Agents, which is now available for Shopify merchants, that’s made up of AI shopping assistants trained on an individual brand’s voice and products.
After OpenAI partnered with Shopify and Etsy back in September, it was only a matter of time before other LLMs followed suit. But perhaps Copilot and its brethren should pay attention to the lesson that OpenAI is learning firsthand: In-chat shopping is easier said than done.
Pricing and availability are constantly in flux, and the details are often “spread across multiple systems,” according to The Information, which may lead to errors (like products being sold at the wrong price or incorrectly labeled as in stock) and, subsequently, payment disputes.
Perhaps Copilot’s Brand Agents will address these concerns … or perhaps the AI follies will only multiply.
But Wait! There’s More
Newsletter software platform Beehiiv is investing more into in-house ad sales to encourage new social influencers and creators to launch newsletters. [Adweek]
Andréa Mallard, who was hired in 2018 as Pinterest’s first CMO, is leaving the company. [Ad Age]
OpenAI is acquiring the team behind executive coaching AI tool Convogo. [TechCrunch]
Accenture, through its VC fund, invested in Profitmind, an agentic AI startup for retailers. [release]
Omnicom Media CEO Florian Adamski: Clients are the only ones not complaining about principal media. [Digiday]
