The e-commerce titan Amazon is taking another significant step in intertwining sports, entertainment and retail. Besides streaming Thursday Night Football, the platform has extended its boundaries by expanding its shoppable media and ad reach. This innovative move sets a unique intersection of sports audience and target consumers, polishing Amazon’s reputation as a marketing trend-setter.
This revolutionary move does more than just encouraging commerce. Amazon’s latest venture flawlessly integrates marketing stratagems with user experience, making virtual advertising and shopping during the broadcast of Thursday Night football hassle-free and enjoyable.
So, how does this work?
Amazon’s “Watch & Shop” experience will be enabled during the broadcast of the live football games on Prime Video. It means viewers will not only be enjoying illuminating conversations around football but will also be exposed to popular product categories relevant to game time, such as team merchandise, football essentials and even snacks. This provides ripe opportunities for advertisers to seamlessly merge their products into the fan experience, thereby encouraging incremental sales.
The marketing opportunity offered by Amazon is unique. Reaching highly-engaged viewership of sports enthusiasts is a goldmine for advertisers and sellers. The advantageous part is that it provides a direct-to-consumer advertising medium that delivers data-driven results. Amazon’s elevated, refined audience targeting model ensures that the ad impressions land among an audience who are most likely to convert, leading to optimum ROI for advertisers.
Moreover, enabling shoppable ads in such a manner creates an integrated entertainment and purchasing environment enhancing user experience. Instead of diverting viewers elsewhere for shopping, they can now enjoy the game and also shop for their favorite products, providing a dynamic shopping experience which should not be undervalued.
Amazon’s approach to integrating entertainment and shopping via ‘shoppable’ media increases dwell time and pushes forward with a strategy that has turned it into a retail behemoth.
Forecasts rate the global shoppable ads market to experience significant growth in the coming years, with Amazon leading the way in innovation. With retail businesses now battling the e-commerce growth intensified by the Covid-19 pandemic, adopting such strategies will be essential for success moving forward.
Amazon’s move can also be seen as another step in blurring the lines between traditional and digital advertising methods. Such strategies that directly integrate the shopping experience within the entertainment timeline are indeed an emerging trend to watch.
As digital proliferation creates newer avenues in advertising, marketing specialists must take a cue from Amazon’s shoppable ad strategy. Running parallel with the traditional yet powerful marketing methods, emerging trends like the shoppable media are valuable assets for a promising marketing future. Such trails point towards an era of advertising where the user experience and commerce merge seamlessly, offering exciting possibilities for both consumers and marketers alike.