Amazon is updating the Fire TV interface to surface and aggregate free content across a variety of providers, packaged together into topic and genre-specific categories within the newly launched Fire TV Channels – the platform’s flagship FAST video experience.
Part of the aim is to provide more free content as viewers continue to increasingly turn to ad-supported options for TV, while also improving the experience and addressing discovery pain points within the crowded arena of free streaming services. Making these user experience enhancements in turn helps Amazon on the advertising front, according to Charlotte Maines, head of Fire TV advertising.
In an interview, Maines, who oversees advertising, monetization, marketing, engagement and sales at Fire TV, said that Amazon is doubling down on FAST experiences and the categories it offers. Since last year Amazon’s added a variety of new free content and to date has seven categories including news, sports, food, cooking, music videos, trailers, gaming videos and comedy.
“In the past six months alone, we’ve seen monthly hours streamed of this content has grown by 300%,” she said, saying the behavior indicates to Amazon it should invest in creating more of these experiences. “So with Fire TV Channels, whether customers have three minutes or three hours, it offers instant entertainment because it has immediate playback of live, on-demand and short-form content that’s easy to watch and its surfaced within these dedicated rows on the Fire TV home screen.”
However, alongside increased usage and options for free content comes a “glutton of choice,” Maines commented, hence the need to aggregate and surface content to users no matter the source (although the new channels will be clearly marked as free so viewers know what they’re getting into and that they don’t need a subscription).
And with 200 million Fire TV devices sold, Maines said the platform is essentially working backwards from what customers are engaging with, pulling user signals from the streaming platform as well as commerce data to inform what’s resonating and what kind of categories to add.
She also noted that Fire TV is able to be nimble and turn customer insights “into immediate action” by expanding categories.
That’s happening today, with the addition of a dedicated travel category, as well as new content from NHL, Xbox and TMZ.
Within the travel category, Maines said users will be able to find guides, resources and information on trending destinations. At launch partners in the Travel category include Tastemade Travel, Rick Steves Europe and Travel Hacks, with content from Conde Nast Traveler “coming very soon.”
Maines said more categories will be added in short order, without disclosing specifics.
Better UX drives advertiser outcomes
Ultimately, a better customer experience helps deliver better advertiser outcomes, Maines said.
For example, boosting the user experience to make it easier for people to find free content they want to watch via Fire TV Channels also helps advertisers more easily zero in on audience segments and helps qualify traffic.
“By creating these categories, then you really have a more qualified customer because they clicked into it because they were interested in let's say, travel,” Maines said. “You’re more likely to have a customer who’s engaged and who’s going to watch the ad versus go get popcorn.”
The Fire TV Channels launch came alongside the platform’s NewFronts presentation, where it’s pitching to attract advertising dollars.
In addition to more eyeballs with content, Maines said a key differentiator of Fire TV is that it’s audience is one that advertisers are having a hard time reaching elsewhere. She cited Nielsen data that said Amazon streaming TV campaigns reach an average of 10.9% incremental viewers to linear viewership – and on the flip side 72% of Amazon streaming viewers aren’t watching linear TV.
“We're constantly inventing to help advertisers reach and engage audiences through premium and exclusive content, like fire TV channels,” Maines said. “Our billions of buying, browsing and streaming signals which are not available for linear television seamlessly bridge premium content with meaningful commerce that adds value to both customers and brands.”
An Amazon Ads automotive client, for example, leveraged native ads across both Fire TV and Fire tablets and saw an 11% lift in brand awareness and a 14% bump in purchase intent by reaching the viewers across multiple touchpoints.
When advertisers pick Fire TV, she said it’s really about picking the power of Amazon - providing access to integrated cross property opportunities and branding solutions that reach an average of 155 million unduplicated viewers across the Amazon ad-supported streaming solutions (such as Prime Video, Fire TV and Freevee), or six out of every 10 U.S. adults. Beyond in-stream advertisers there are also Fire TV home screen opportunities, which Maines said are usually sought after by content providers.
“Within the Fire TV experience when a customer sees content that interests them in placements throughout our UI that content providers can purchase, like the future rotator or the sponsored content row or a screensaver, that's a way that Fire TV enables advertisers to present relevant placements at the right time during the viewer experience,” Maines said of display advertising that’s popular with content providers.
Interactivity and commerce
A key theme of Amazon’s NewFronts presentation was following the customer journey from content to commerce.
Asked about the potential for integrations of shoppable TV and commerce, Maines said Amazon is already doing it. Others in the streaming platform and smart TV game, namely Roku, have pursued interactive QR-enabled ads and shoppable efforts with Walmart and DoorDash, as well as retail data sharing partnerships with Best Buy and most recently Instacart.
“We do offer an interactive video today,” she noted, explaining that through Amazon Video Advertising brands can insert QR codes at the end of their commercial for more information and if it’s a product that a customer could buy on Amazon, that advertiser could choose to include that functionality in their ad.
And given Amazon’s massive e-commerce business, Maines indicated partners aren’t as necessary a part of the equation.
“Because we’re Amazon we don’t need to do some of the things that Roku is doing like working with Kroger, working with Best Buy, because customers are already doing so much shopping on Amazon that’s something that we can kind of leverage in-house,” she said.
On the interactivity front, Amazon Ads on Monday also announced plans to launch interactive video ads with new clickable ad formats on Fire TV devices for Thursday Night Football NFL advertisers. This year during the TNF stream Fire TV viewers will be able to click “Send to Phone” or “Send to email” button with their remote and receive a push notification or email that links directly to the brand’s Amazon store or product page. New ad formats are also coming to Amazon’s FAST Freevee, with sequential storytelling ads launching in beta in 2023.