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Amazon Ads Chief Alan Moss on Connecting Live Sports, Streaming, and Retail
00:20:34
Alan Moss, Amazon's ad sales chief, explains how the company stitched together sports, streaming, retail media, and AI into a single full-funnel pitch — and why that matters heading into this year's upfronts.
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- [00:00]
A
One of the things I'm really proud of is we've been able to democratize live sports and bring new advertisers into these leagues. During our time with the NFL, we brought 80 net new advertisers into the fold. And just our first year with the NBA, we brought 30 new advertisers.
- [00:19]
B
That's interesting because that's been an exclusive club. Right. It's always been a set amount of advertisers. Everyone's waiting for that democratization. You've been able to do that in live sports, which is tricky.
- [00:28]
A
Yeah. And I think it's new advertisers realizing that this premium media can really perform for them too. We've been sold out during the regular season, sold out during the playoffs. I think the results are speaking for
- [00:40]
B
themselves this week on Nexie Media. It's upfront season, so what better time to catch up with Alan Moss, Amazon's global lead of ad sales. Since Alan joined the company in 2020, Amazon has become an advertising juggernaut. Not only growing its core sponsored search ads business but but adding the NFL and the NBA and going full ad supported in Prime. So we talked about Amazon's push into full funnel marketing, what that means for measurement and attribution and what he's seeing in this year's marketplace at a time of mixed signals from consumers. Let's get started. Hi everybody. Welcome to NEXT Media. I'm Mike Shields. My guest this week is Alan Moss. He's Amazon's global lead of ad sales. Hey Alan, thanks for being here.
- [01:14]
A
Hey Mike, great to be here.
- [01:16]
B
Glad to join you, excited to talk to you and appreciate you doing this in the middle of. We're just sending on upfront mania here in a little bit and I want to get into what's going on this year, but I want to maybe just back up. You got to Amazon at of a crazy time I would think like mid 2020. Still pretty early in the Amazon ad growth, especially streaming. Can you talk about the trajectory from between now and then you're going from the early ad unit sponsored post to your NFL prime video, NBA, all those kind of things.
- [01:42]
A
Yeah, well to put in perspective Mike, I joined at the height of COVID in July 2020 and Amazon had some amazing ad assets as you mentioned. But really early on in my tenure we started to work on the Thursday Night Football bid with the NFL. Within nine months we had landed it a 10 year deal. Very quickly it actually became an 11 year deal and we started a year early. So as you might imagine, bringing the Product to market was pretty frenetic that first year. Figuring out the production graphics, who was going to be in our booth, all of that ended up being a great first year for us. And as we went into our second Thursday Night Football season in fall of 2023, that September, we made a huge announcement that we would be introducing ads into Prime Video. So just as we knew what we were doing in Thursday Night Football, we had this new opportunity with Prime Video ads. That was a big change for us.
- [02:42]
B
Let's not get settled. Let's do something bigger and bigger.
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A
Exactly. And then 2024, so as not to get bored, we announced the N deal. And really with that, we became a full year round sports network. And it's been incredibly exciting and I've. I've enjoyed every minute.
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B
All right, so I want to ask you about a bunch of those things. The Prime Video one I think is interesting because. And it's almost like under reported, it's just like the dramatic nature of that switch is maybe underappreciated. You had a pretty big audience for a number of years and you all of a sudden decide, well, not all of a sudden, but you on a chosen day decided to flip the switch and go ad support as a default. I was watching the numbers. That could have been messy. What has worked? What was that like? And what were you kind of sweating that a little bit?
- [03:27]
A
Yeah. The great thing about it is when we announced that we're introducing ads into Prime Video immediately with our launch, we became the largest premium ad supported streaming solution out there, not only in the US but in a number of the major markets that we launched. And we knew there was really great viewership. And in my role the prior two years, the most frequently asked question I got from advertisers and agencies was, what are you going to allow ads in Prime Video? And they'd offer often that if we made that available, they would love to buy those units. And as we launched, my actual biggest concern was that we had missed the upfront window. And so at the end of January 2024, we went live with Prime Video ads. And we're very much having to find ad dollars out there, scatter dollars from advertisers who'd already made their plans.
- [04:20]
B
Right. Conversations are already in motion, decisions are already being made. And you got a lot of new inventory all of a sudden.
- [04:25]
A
Yeah. And they had their big premium sponsorships all lined up. But what we found was those very agencies and advertisers that encouraged us to introduce ads and to Prime Video were very Much willing to lean in with us. Very interested in testing and learning and understanding how now our real full funnel offering would come together.
- [04:45]
B
And all right, now let's jump back to the NBA. That's also a massive shift for you guys. Right in the middle of the playoffs, you guys have been doing a lot of big games. That's a business onto itself. What have you learned about trying to, you know, presenting and sell? The NBA, which is the NFL is a machine. It's. But it's. There's only so many games where the NBA has a lot, you know, on a lot more nights of the week, a lot more inventory. What has that been like?
- [05:04]
A
Yeah, it's been great. It really has proven that Prime Video is no longer just an alternative or a supplemental buy for advertisers in live sports. That NBA is a great example of this where we're competing with and really surpassing traditional broadcasters because we not only have the scale, but we have performance media remarketing capabilities and measurement capabilities that really outperform traditional TV and what it can offer advertisers. And so we see that showing up in really unique ways. One of the things I'm really proud of is we've been able to democratize live sports and bring new advertisers into these leagues. During our time with the NFL we brought 80 net new advertisers into the fold. And just our first year with the NBA we brought 30 new advertisers that are now active at the end.
- [05:57]
B
That's interesting because that's been an exclusive club. Right. It's always been a set amount of advertisers. Everyone's waiting for that democratization. But you've been able to do that in live sports, which is tricky.
- [06:07]
A
Yeah. And I think it's new advertisers realizing that this premium media can really perform for them too by connecting it to actual top line performance for them.
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B
Right.
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A
But look, we've, we've been delighted with our first season in the NBA. We've been sold out during the regular season, sold out during the playoffs. We had the exclusive rights to the play in tournament a couple weeks ago. We saw great audiences show up for those games. Over 3 million viewers which outperformed the playing games on traditional broadcast last year. And I think the results are speaking for themselves.
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B
Yeah, especially because you had to let a lot of people know that you were there. The games have been on cable for so many years. That's a new habit for people. That's impressive.
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A
What about.
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B
I think about this a lot because you're almost. The Amazon ad business has really taken off in the last five, six years, but it's almost entirely different businesses. If you step back, there's the retail media side of things. Sports is almost its own category. Streaming is one set of buyers, one set of rules. Retail media is really different. How do you bring those two worlds together? Can you.
- [07:08]
A
Yeah, look, Mike, I don't think of those as separate worlds. Our viewpoint is it's the same business because our offering is really about full funnel capabilities. And agencies and advertisers have told us they need help navigating fragmentation and delivering measurable outcomes all year long across a full funnel offering. And that means not just streaming, but digital media and open Internet, other premium inventory. And so our approach really with buyers is combining premium content, digital media with AI driven solutions that optimize outcomes and deliver throughout the year. And frankly, we love it when our advertisers also think and plan holistically their brand and performance media together. We think that's a best practice.
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B
But that means blending together all kinds of different outcomes.
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A
Right.
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B
Which is maybe just not an established way of doing that since long as you're trying to build out that full funnel measurement, those benchmarks as you go.
- [08:09]
A
Yeah, look, at the end of the day, it's about an advertiser's business, KPIs, and that often has to do with driving sales. Yes, there are intermediary steps to building brand awareness, consideration, being a brand that is well known out there. But it's all a means towards driving usage of their product.
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B
Right.
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A
And new customers.
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B
All right, let's talk about this upfront season, if we. We would. It's an interesting time. It's. I'm not an economist, but I play one sometimes and it's. There's weird contradictions. People are spending, the unemployment rates are pretty good, brands keep spending. But then you have things like, we've got gas prices really high, you've got a lot of tech layoffs, people seem like they're grumpy or there's a consumer confidence thing, depending on what report you look at. What does the marketplace look like right now for you?
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A
Yeah, there's no doubt there's a lot going on. And while we always see some headwinds in the industry, we're really seeing very positive signals about a healthy upfront season. When I'm talking to agency leaders and brand marketers, what I'm hearing from them is not anxiety, it's really focus. The upfront season is a really important moment for buyers. It's an outsized opportunity for them to move demand towards really scarce and valuable inventory like live sports that we've been talking about, custom built sponsorships that really allow brands to become part of big cultural moments. And that's what makes this a really critical time for advertisers to secure those high value opportunities. And for us, we see the upfront as a real clear buying cycle to plan alongside our advertisers and agencies to work together. And no doubt we will see it calls for a bit more flexibility, but ultimately it continues to be a key moment for planning and partnership for the coming broadcast here.
- [10:01]
B
Okay, let's take a quick break. I'm here with Josh Melick. He's the SVP of Product and Data at App Science, a division of sabio. Hey, Josh, thanks for being here.
- [10:09]
C
Yeah, nice. Thanks for having me, Mike.
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B
So, Josh, you guys have made household graph a big differentiator in what you do. Why is that?
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C
You know, from the very beginning, data and data and audiences has been what we focused on. We combine mobile data with CTV data and we think that gives a really good picture of audience. I wouldn't say that we focus on every element or every type of segment, but there's quite a few segments that we really focus on that are important to our clients and advertisers. Multicultural audiences, younger generational cultural shifts, or a lot of these areas that are really important to the advertisers we serve. And we've focused on that from the very beginning.
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B
So how central is the household graph to the media that you run?
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C
You know, we use our data on like something like 95% of our campaigns. So it's very central, it's very important to what we do now. We do bring in outside data as well. And actually I think often the most interesting audiences or the most impactful campaigns use our data along with some data by the advertisers, perhaps some of their first party data or some other data as well. And we think that's really where it's powerful. And yeah, all of our campaigns are using something like that.
- [11:18]
B
All right, great stuff. Thanks, Josh. Back to the show.
- [11:21]
C
Thanks, Mike.
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B
Do you have any predictions either upfront for the market for what's the shiny object this year? What's the big conversation? Either either Amazon specific or across the industry.
- [11:33]
A
Yeah, look, my prediction is that premium content, especially live sports and custom sponsorships, will remain really central. But our overall focus is really shifting towards how premium content is activated through innovation. And specifically, we see a tangible shift from just content first decisions to a Much more integrated approach where content, authenticated signals and ad tech are developed and activated together. The integration of this premium content with AI driven capabilities is no longer an aspiration, it's how buyers are planning and transacting now. And so I think the big story this year is going to be the integration of premium content in ad tech, like AI agents, to drive measurable outcomes all year long.
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B
Interesting. I wonder if you find this. You still have the advertiser that really cares about. I want to get my 10 million viewers across this key period. I want to be in this premiere of this big show, fallout, whatever it is, versus the push towards outcomes with lots of different touch points. Do you have to almost cater to two different audiences there or are you bringing everyone along to a ladder kind of way of thinking? What does that look like for you?
- [12:47]
A
Yeah, so our starting point is our premium content. We combine that with deterministic signals and ad tech into a seamless experience. And that's built with direct customer input around their KPIs, the goals they have for their business. And then what we're trying to do is make it easier for them to plan, to activate and to measure those campaigns, campaigns in ways that drive those KPIs. It's not just about having assets these days, it's about making them all work together, orchestrating them in a way that they deliver real business outcomes. When you look at it, brands are fighting for cultural relevance out there. What is a fragmented media landscape? For us, Prime Video Signature is our most premium sponsorship offering where we're really putting brands at the center of moments when audiences are really showing up in the biggest ways. And we offer custom creatives, we offer brand partnerships that are a significant part of our upfront deals. And for brands that want to go beyond just the spot, become part of the content itself, to really immerse themselves and be alongside these big cultural moments. Brand partnerships are really authentic, custom way to do that and bring their brands forward.
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B
All right. Beyond your own big tent poles and top shows, you guys have made a lot of noise, especially the last year about integrating your DSP with a whole bunch of other partners who are also, in a lot of ways your competitors. Which is super interesting. And talking about the Netflixes and the Disney's of the world. Can you catch us up on how that's going and how that maybe. I don't know if that fits in with your upfront strategy or that's really separate.
- [14:21]
A
Yeah, it absolutely fits in with our upfront strategy. For us, the Amazon DSP remains a Big differentiator ADSP enables agencies to not only access Amazon owned and operated content, but also open Internet premium supply, all in one place in one buy and ultimately maximize reach and efficiency across all of their upfront. That's really a big part of our value proposition. And so we're focusing on managing what's
- [14:50]
B
going on everywhere kind of thing.
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A
It's tricky. Exactly. We're focused on how we're bringing together this premium content across the open Internet and various publishers, combining it with our deterministic audience signals and AI driven capabilities to drive outcomes. And Amazon audience signals when they're combined with exclusive partnerships with the premium publishers you mentioned, like Netflix, Roku, Disney, Spotify, Sirius XM, they help us reach 90% of household audiences through our authenticated graph technology. And what buyers are telling us is that they believe in our best in class signals. They know Amazon's not guessing. We're knowing a little bit of a
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B
left turn here, but we talked about it. AI, of course, we got to talk about creators in some fashion. Catch us up on Twitch. They've been part of your ad offering for a while, but like the live streamer thing is having a bigger moment again like the last couple years. These guys are becoming crossover stars. What's going on? What's catch us up there? What's happening with the latest.
- [15:49]
A
Yeah, look, the Twitch capabilities continue to be a core part of how we think about reaching audiences across live sports, across entertainment, in really giving brands access to a highly engaged community in real time. Every month, 5 million streamers go live to a global audience of over 105 million viewers. And that results in literally billions of hours of content. That was the case in 2025 alone. And so it's a huge opportunity for brands to connect with young, deeply engaged audiences and in ways that feel really authentic and meaningful. And as you mentioned, live streamers continue to grow their audiences, their cultural influence. You have folks like Kai Snot and Kiki Palmer who continue to create opportunities for brands to connect with their audiences in more interactive and authentic ways. And so we're seeing advertisers really increasingly activate across Twitch, surround it and augment their buys on Prime Video and Fire TV into a much more holistic campaign that's always on. And we increasingly see creators can be really thought of as a new mid funnel marketing lover that leads to great activation and ultimately great results for advertisers.
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B
Interesting, because I was going to ask you, I would imagine that Twitch and creators were sort of treated as their own thing, separate from the rest of prime video and sports and different set of advertisers. But it sounds like that's you're able to blend those a lot more and connect the dots little bit more.
- [17:25]
A
Yeah, we see that happening in a much more holistic fashion. In fact, we see great commitments from advertisers on Twitch during the upfront season as well. So they're really thinking about it alongside big tent pole moments, opportunities where culture is really happening and they can intersect with it in really authentic ways.
- [17:45]
B
Let me ask you, as we get close to closing out here, what kind of questions do you get about from brands? Is the currency war thing still a discussion? Is it new forms of attribution? Are they asking about Shoppable? What kind of questions are you getting these days?
- [17:56]
A
We get lots of questions like that. But probably the number one question I get from brands is about how they can make the marketing dollars work harder and smarter for them. And increasingly they're asking how can we make the execution easier and more accountable? And our answer to that is durable AI agents. They really can help with campaign planning, how you find your audiences, how you actually execute those campaigns, optimize them and ultimately measure them. And again, we're with our durable AI agents, we're not just guessing they work. We know they do. Specifically, this intersection of premium content and ad tech allows us to help advertisers find the right audiences at the right moment, reduce waste, and ultimately reinvest in more effective media that can drive their business.
- [18:50]
B
And when you talk about agentic right now, I know it's still early in this evolution primarily is about getting rid of the grunt work and the processes versus handling the whole start to finish of a campaign. Where does it look right now versus where it might be going?
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A
Yeah, there's no doubt it's immediately having impact on creative and just being able to take base creative and make it much more liquid and applicable to multiple surfaces. Video content that can become audio content on streaming audio providers, different custom formats. There's a whole bunch of very heavy lifting. And when we've done work with advertisers and our creative agent, we've seen that it's really made a big difference. But it's also the orchestration, it's the execution of those campaigns. It's the ability now to be able to interact with a chat agent and have it execute your campaign per your instructions that is pretty exciting as well. And know that your agent is sitting on a base of knowledge that can make that execution all that more successful.
- [19:52]
B
All right, so is this it out next year, the agents just go the upfronts and everybody stays home and they handle everything. Never.
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A
I think it's, I think it will still be very much about relationships, about great content, and about the opportunity to, to really help advertisers drive business. All right.
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B
It should be a fascinating few weeks here. Al, thanks so much for taking time out. Good luck over this next few months of craziness, and we'll hopefully talk again.
- [20:17]
A
Thanks so much, Mike. It was a pleasure.
- [20:19]
B
Thanks again to my guest this week, Amazon's Alan Moss, and my partners at sao. If you like this week's episode, please take a moment to rate and leave a review. We have lots more to bring you, so please hit that subscribe button. We'll see you next time for more on what's Next in media. Thanks for listening.