Streaming Ads are Growing Up, Getting Smarter and Learning to Shop: Amazon’s Jenny Burke
CANNES, France – At Cannes Lions, where every conversation eventually circles back to AI, measurement or someone insisting they have solved television, Amazon Ads arrived with a simpler proposition: Why settle for one advertising platform when you can have an entire shopping mall attached to your streaming service?
That was the message from Jenny Burke, director of worldwide video strategy and go-to-market at Amazon Ads, during an interview with Beet.TV editorial director Lisa Granatstein. Burke described Prime Video not as a standalone streaming platform but as the centerpiece of Amazon’s sprawling media ecosystem, where shopping, entertainment and advertising increasingly blend into a single consumer experience.
Prime Video as the center of the universe
For advertisers trying to navigate an increasingly fragmented streaming landscape, Burke argued that Prime Video’s biggest advantage is that it sits inside a much larger machine.
“What that enables is a full-funnel marketing capability from brand awareness to consideration to conversion,” Burke said. “Prime Video sits at the center of all of that to really meet all of those objectives.”
In Amazon’s view, advertisers are not simply buying access to a television audience. They are buying into a network that includes Fire TV, Twitch, Wondery and Amazon’s retail business. It is a pitch that essentially says viewers can watch a show, click an ad and buy a product without ever leaving the couch. Exercise remains optional.
Burke said Amazon works backward from advertisers’ goals and uses its content portfolio, audience insights and measurement tools to match brands with programming that feels natural rather than forced.
Product placement gets a college education
One example is Amazon’s upcoming adaptation of “Off Campus,” a young adult series that has become the centerpiece of a broad partnership with hydration brand Liquid I.V.
“We’ve integrated Liquid IV into not only the storyline, but we have some a 30 second spot with the talent,” Burke said. “We have social activations, licensing product, and that just shows the scale of what can be done with Amazon.”
The goal is to move beyond traditional sponsorships and create deeper partnerships around specific titles. According to Burke, brands are finding success when they become involved early in the content creation process.
“We’re finding that having big ownership of certain titles is working,” she said. “So that means really partnering early on to create content together.”
In other words, the days of simply slapping a logo onto a streaming series may be fading. Advertisers increasingly want to become part of the story itself, preferably without viewers reaching for the fast-forward button.
The remote control becomes a shopping cart
Amazon is also betting heavily on interactive advertising formats that encourage viewers to do more than just watch.
Burke highlighted interactive video ads that allow viewers to learn more or purchase products with a click of the remote. She also pointed to “Next Step Ads,” a format designed to appear naturally as viewers move from one episode to the next during binge-watching sessions.
“We’re finding interactive video ads, one click of the remote to learn more or to actually purchase on Amazon is working,” Burke said.
The concept is simple enough: If audiences are already spending entire weekends consuming television, Amazon would like to make shopping another subplot.
Solving streaming’s fragmentation problem
Burke acknowledged that streaming continues to become more fragmented as new services emerge and viewers spread their attention across countless platforms.
“What we’re finding is that there’s even more fragmentation than before,” she said. “There are so many streamers out there.”
Amazon’s answer is its demand-side platform, which allows advertisers to buy inventory across both Amazon-owned properties and competing streaming services through a single platform. Burke said the approach offers frequency management, audience targeting and operational simplicity for marketers increasingly overwhelmed by complexity.
Perhaps the boldest claim involved Amazon’s data advantage.
“We like to say we know we’re not guessing who we’re serving ads to, we truly know,” Burke said.
That confidence comes from what Amazon calls its authenticated graph, which uses deterministic customer signals derived from its direct relationships with consumers. Burke said those capabilities allow Amazon and its partners to reach roughly 90% of U.S. households with known audience information rather than probabilistic estimates.
Agentic advertising is coming
Looking ahead, Burke pointed to three major investment areas: content, measurement and artificial intelligence.
Prime Video with ads recently expanded into four additional countries and now operates in 20 markets, according to Burke. Amazon also continues to invest heavily in original programming, particularly content aimed at younger audiences.
But the most Cannes-worthy buzzword was impossible to avoid.
“What’s next is the use of agentic capabilities to drive ease of buying,” Burke said.
That effort includes broader use of AI-powered tools, including Alexa+, which Burke described as part of Amazon’s larger AI strategy. The vision is to simplify advertising workflows while improving measurement and campaign performance.
For marketers, the future apparently involves AI agents buying ads, viewers buying products and streaming platforms buying more content. The only party not buying something may be the consumer, who just wanted to watch one episode and somehow ended up purchasing electrolyte packets at 1 a.m.
CANNES, France – At Cannes Lions, where every conversation eventually circles back to AI, measurement or someone insisting they have solved television, Amazon Ads arrived with a simpler proposition: Why settle for one advertising platform when you can have an entire shopping mall attached to your streaming service?
That was the message from Jenny Burke, director of worldwide video strategy and go-to-market at Amazon Ads, during an interview with Beet.TV editorial director Lisa Granatstein. Burke described Prime Video not as a standalone streaming platform but as the centerpiece of Amazon’s sprawling media ecosystem, where shopping, entertainment and advertising increasingly blend into a single consumer experience.
Prime Video as the center of the universe
For advertisers trying to navigate an increasingly fragmented streaming landscape, Burke argued that Prime Video’s biggest advantage is that it sits inside a much larger machine.
“What that enables is a full-funnel marketing capability from brand awareness to consideration to conversion,” Burke said. “Prime Video sits at the center of all of that to really meet all of those objectives.”
In Amazon’s view, advertisers are not simply buying access to a television audience. They are buying into a network that includes Fire TV, Twitch, Wondery and Amazon’s retail business. It is a pitch that essentially says viewers can watch a show, click an ad and buy a product without ever leaving the couch. Exercise remains optional.
Burke said Amazon works backward from advertisers’ goals and uses its content portfolio, audience insights and measurement tools to match brands with programming that feels natural rather than forced.
Product placement gets a college education
One example is Amazon’s upcoming adaptation of “Off Campus,” a young adult series that has become the centerpiece of a broad partnership with hydration brand Liquid I.V.
“We’ve integrated Liquid IV into not only the storyline, but we have some a 30 second spot with the talent,” Burke said. “We have social activations, licensing product, and that just shows the scale of what can be done with Amazon.”
The goal is to move beyond traditional sponsorships and create deeper partnerships around specific titles. According to Burke, brands are finding success when they become involved early in the content creation process.
“We’re finding that having big ownership of certain titles is working,” she said. “So that means really partnering early on to create content together.”
In other words, the days of simply slapping a logo onto a streaming series may be fading. Advertisers increasingly want to become part of the story itself, preferably without viewers reaching for the fast-forward button.
The remote control becomes a shopping cart
Amazon is also betting heavily on interactive advertising formats that encourage viewers to do more than just watch.
Burke highlighted interactive video ads that allow viewers to learn more or purchase products with a click of the remote. She also pointed to “Next Step Ads,” a format designed to appear naturally as viewers move from one episode to the next during binge-watching sessions.
“We’re finding interactive video ads, one click of the remote to learn more or to actually purchase on Amazon is working,” Burke said.
The concept is simple enough: If audiences are already spending entire weekends consuming television, Amazon would like to make shopping another subplot.
Solving streaming’s fragmentation problem
Burke acknowledged that streaming continues to become more fragmented as new services emerge and viewers spread their attention across countless platforms.
“What we’re finding is that there’s even more fragmentation than before,” she said. “There are so many streamers out there.”
Amazon’s answer is its demand-side platform, which allows advertisers to buy inventory across both Amazon-owned properties and competing streaming services through a single platform. Burke said the approach offers frequency management, audience targeting and operational simplicity for marketers increasingly overwhelmed by complexity.
Perhaps the boldest claim involved Amazon’s data advantage.
“We like to say we know we’re not guessing who we’re serving ads to, we truly know,” Burke said.
That confidence comes from what Amazon calls its authenticated graph, which uses deterministic customer signals derived from its direct relationships with consumers. Burke said those capabilities allow Amazon and its partners to reach roughly 90% of U.S. households with known audience information rather than probabilistic estimates.
Agentic advertising is coming
Looking ahead, Burke pointed to three major investment areas: content, measurement and artificial intelligence.
Prime Video with ads recently expanded into four additional countries and now operates in 20 markets, according to Burke. Amazon also continues to invest heavily in original programming, particularly content aimed at younger audiences.
But the most Cannes-worthy buzzword was impossible to avoid.
“What’s next is the use of agentic capabilities to drive ease of buying,” Burke said.
That effort includes broader use of AI-powered tools, including Alexa+, which Burke described as part of Amazon’s larger AI strategy. The vision is to simplify advertising workflows while improving measurement and campaign performance.
For marketers, the future apparently involves AI agents buying ads, viewers buying products and streaming platforms buying more content. The only party not buying something may be the consumer, who just wanted to watch one episode and somehow ended up purchasing electrolyte packets at 1 a.m.
