Streaming Ads Are Powerful at Neighborhood Level: Amazon’s Jenn Donohue
CANNES, France – Local advertising used to mean buying airtime around the evening news and hoping the right customers were watching between weather updates and ads for personal-injury lawyers. Amazon wants to give the business a streaming-era upgrade.
Jenn Donohue, head of local advertising sales at Amazon, discussed the growing overlap between national media strategies and local targeting in an interview with Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
Donohue said local campaigns have historically been planned separately from national advertising. Amazon sees an opportunity to bring those efforts together, using its technology to direct campaigns toward specific markets across the United States.
National scale, local precision
Connected television and streaming were initially viewed as national advertising channels. Donohue said that perception is changing as smaller businesses gain access to tools once reserved for major brands with national media budgets and presumably conference rooms large enough to require their own ZIP codes.
“I’m really excited about where we are today,” Donohue said . “I’ve spent my whole career in local media.”
Local advertisers of all sizes can now use many of the same streaming capabilities as national marketers, she said. Amazon DSP combines those capabilities with geographic insights and analytics to help businesses reach audiences in particular cities, states or regions.
That can allow a national campaign to retain its overall scale while placing more weight behind markets that matter most. The approach also gives regional and local businesses access to streaming inventory without requiring them to advertise to every household from Bangor to Bakersfield.
Location data tied to business goals
Geographic targeting becomes most useful when it supports an advertiser’s actual business objectives, Donohue said. Those goals may include selling inventory, reaching consumers near particular stores or generating awareness in areas where the business operates.
“It’s really important when you think about small, medium-sized businesses or regional businesses or national brands that are geotargeting in hyperlocales,” she said.
Amazon works with advertisers to find consumers who may generate store visits, leads or brand awareness. In other words, the objective isn’t merely to locate someone on a map and triumphantly declare victory.
The targeting should connect with key performance indicators. A regional chain doesn’t need to impress viewers hundreds of miles from its nearest location. A bank probably doesn’t need to advertise checking accounts in a state where it has neither branches nor customers, no matter how attractive the CPM looks on a spreadsheet.
Local demand spans industries
Amazon is seeing interest from businesses across a wide range of categories, Donohue said.
“We see all sizes of advertisers,” she said.
Those advertisers include national brands concentrating spending in priority markets as well as regional banks, healthcare providers, lotteries and other local businesses. Amazon works with some local advertisers directly and reaches others through channel partners.
Traditional media companies also can add Prime Video inventory to their offerings, extending Amazon’s reach into more communities. That provides local advertisers with another route into premium streaming environments while allowing established media sellers to offer something beyond the usual television package.
Streaming adds a one-to-one dimension
Traditional local television has long offered broad reach. Streaming adds greater precision and a more direct relationship with viewers, who choose what they want to watch and when they want to watch it.
Donohue described this as a new combination of on-demand viewing, premium content and local television’s established ability to reach large audiences.
“Now we’re able to include precision and reach,” she said. “And that in combination has been really helpful for local advertisers.”
The result is a local television proposition that no longer depends entirely on reaching a large crowd and hoping the right people are somewhere inside it. Amazon is betting that advertisers would prefer to know which neighborhood that crowd lives in too.
You’re watching Beet.TV coverage from Cannes Lion 2026. For more videos from this series, please visit this page.
CANNES, France – Local advertising used to mean buying airtime around the evening news and hoping the right customers were watching between weather updates and ads for personal-injury lawyers. Amazon wants to give the business a streaming-era upgrade.
Jenn Donohue, head of local advertising sales at Amazon, discussed the growing overlap between national media strategies and local targeting in an interview with Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
Donohue said local campaigns have historically been planned separately from national advertising. Amazon sees an opportunity to bring those efforts together, using its technology to direct campaigns toward specific markets across the United States.
National scale, local precision
Connected television and streaming were initially viewed as national advertising channels. Donohue said that perception is changing as smaller businesses gain access to tools once reserved for major brands with national media budgets and presumably conference rooms large enough to require their own ZIP codes.
“I’m really excited about where we are today,” Donohue said . “I’ve spent my whole career in local media.”
Local advertisers of all sizes can now use many of the same streaming capabilities as national marketers, she said. Amazon DSP combines those capabilities with geographic insights and analytics to help businesses reach audiences in particular cities, states or regions.
That can allow a national campaign to retain its overall scale while placing more weight behind markets that matter most. The approach also gives regional and local businesses access to streaming inventory without requiring them to advertise to every household from Bangor to Bakersfield.
Location data tied to business goals
Geographic targeting becomes most useful when it supports an advertiser’s actual business objectives, Donohue said. Those goals may include selling inventory, reaching consumers near particular stores or generating awareness in areas where the business operates.
“It’s really important when you think about small, medium-sized businesses or regional businesses or national brands that are geotargeting in hyperlocales,” she said.
Amazon works with advertisers to find consumers who may generate store visits, leads or brand awareness. In other words, the objective isn’t merely to locate someone on a map and triumphantly declare victory.
The targeting should connect with key performance indicators. A regional chain doesn’t need to impress viewers hundreds of miles from its nearest location. A bank probably doesn’t need to advertise checking accounts in a state where it has neither branches nor customers, no matter how attractive the CPM looks on a spreadsheet.
Local demand spans industries
Amazon is seeing interest from businesses across a wide range of categories, Donohue said.
“We see all sizes of advertisers,” she said.
Those advertisers include national brands concentrating spending in priority markets as well as regional banks, healthcare providers, lotteries and other local businesses. Amazon works with some local advertisers directly and reaches others through channel partners.
Traditional media companies also can add Prime Video inventory to their offerings, extending Amazon’s reach into more communities. That provides local advertisers with another route into premium streaming environments while allowing established media sellers to offer something beyond the usual television package.
Streaming adds a one-to-one dimension
Traditional local television has long offered broad reach. Streaming adds greater precision and a more direct relationship with viewers, who choose what they want to watch and when they want to watch it.
Donohue described this as a new combination of on-demand viewing, premium content and local television’s established ability to reach large audiences.
“Now we’re able to include precision and reach,” she said. “And that in combination has been really helpful for local advertisers.”
The result is a local television proposition that no longer depends entirely on reaching a large crowd and hoping the right people are somewhere inside it. Amazon is betting that advertisers would prefer to know which neighborhood that crowd lives in too.
You’re watching Beet.TV coverage from Cannes Lion 2026. For more videos from this series, please visit this page.
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