← Next in Media
Next in Media
Fire TV, Alexa Plus & the Future of Shoppable CTV with Amazon's Charlotte Maines
00:21:40
In this special episode recorded live at Amazon UnBox in Nashville, I sit down with Charlotte Maines, Head of Device Advertising for Fire TV at Amazon. We dive into the massive reach of Fire TV—over 300 million devices sold globally—and what that means for brands aiming to connect with high-value, logged-in Amazon customers. Charlotte shares how Amazon is evolving the ad experience from simple tune-in campaigns to interactive, full-funnel marketing opportunities. We unpack the growing role of Alexa Plus, Amazon’s new LLM-powered assistant, and how it’s revolutionizing personalized, voice-driven engagement across devices. From shoppable connected TV to dynamic creative powered by GenAI, this episode is packed with insights for any brand looking to harness the next wave of CTV innovation.
Loading summary
Transcript70 lines
- [00:00]
Charlotte Mainnes
So we've sold 300 million Fire TVs globally. That's big footprint. Yeah, that's a lot of customers, a lot of valuable Amazon customers who are logged into their devices that brands can talk to. We found that, on average, it takes customers six minutes to find what they want to watch.
- [00:16]
Mike Shields
My wife's already in bed at this point. She's giving up.
- [00:19]
Charlotte Mainnes
Exactly. I mean, to be clear, you know, our job is to get customers into content they want to enjoy quickly. She knows me, she knows my family, she has our schedule. So, like, you know, on Sunday night, we're going through a checklist of what I need for the boys for the week and like, oh, my gosh, what day is. You know, karate? I can't even remember. And she's like, don't worry about it. You don't have to send the stuff until Tuesday. Right. Like, these are the kind of conversations I'm having with her.
- [00:41]
Podcast Host
This week on Next Immediate, we've got a special episode recorded live at Amazon Unbox in Nashville, Tennessee. I chatted with Charlotte Mainnes, who heads up device advertising on Amazon. Charlotte and I talked about where things stand with advertising on Fire tv, the latest on shoppable CTV and the company's big plans for brands and Alexa.
- [00:58]
Mike Shields
Lots to get into. So let's get started. Hi, everybody. Welcome to Next to Media. I'm Mike Shields. My guest this week is Charlotte Mains. She's the head of device advertising@fire tv. Charlotte, thanks for being here.
- [01:08]
Charlotte Mainnes
Yeah, no, the pleasure is mine.
- [01:09]
Podcast Host
This is exciting.
- [01:10]
Mike Shields
We are live in Nashville at Unbox 2025. I've not done a lot of remote podcasts, so I'm kind of thrilled to have you here. I want to ask you about. We love the. We love the streaming wars and the OS wars in this industry. The. I think the OS wars in terms of advertising are maybe, like, less understood. Can you kind of talk about the overall Fire TV strategy and the advantage that you have there in terms of ad sales?
- [01:33]
Charlotte Mainnes
Yeah, absolutely. When you think about Fire TV and the fact that we do own and operate, you know, have. Have a full business own and operate our os, the advantage that it gives us is that we're really able to deliver and oversee the customer experience from, frankly, the moment they buy their device and certainly from the moment they turn it on and are, you know, looking for content, content they want to enjoy. So we've sold 300 million Fire TVs globally. That is. That's a big footprint. That's a lot of customers, a lot of valuable Amazon Customers who are logged into their devices that brands can talk to. And when I think about the advantage that that offers for advertisers and you know, for Amazon overall in terms of our full funnel story and the results that we're able to deliver is think about it, every time a customer turns on their Fire TV or turns on their TV and they have a Fire tv, then they are now embarking on the journey of what do they want to watch.
- [02:28]
Mike Shields
Right. And that, that homepage is almost like the old portals, like the Yahoo of the old days, like there's just a huge fire hose every day.
- [02:34]
Charlotte Mainnes
Exactly, exactly. And so, and then not only is every customer seeing it, but I mean, just put yourself in on your couch on a Friday night with your kids, your wife, right? You're, what do you want to watch? You are a captive audience with your remote or using your voice to navigate around and literally pick that next thing you're going to watch. We found that on average it takes customers six minutes to find what they want to watch.
- [02:56]
Mike Shields
Now some customers, my wife's already in bed at this point. She's given up.
- [03:00]
Charlotte Mainnes
Exactly. I mean, to be clear, you know, our job is to get customers into content they want to enjoy quickly. So if you know what you want to watch, we don't want to get in the way. But if you really are on a discovery journey, we want to make sure we're surfacing content you might want to watch some of that content might be sponsored. But in addition, for brands, that is truly six minutes that you can get in front of a customer whether they go on to watch content that has ads in it or not.
- [03:24]
Podcast Host
Right.
- [03:24]
Charlotte Mainnes
So that from the, you know, sort of the owned and operated perspective is incredibly valuable. And then on top of it, we just by owning the customer experience, we are able to ensure that we are driving the CX that delivers great outcomes for advertisers.
- [03:38]
Mike Shields
So initially a lot of that, you know, this is a pretty, still pretty new category and we always want to. Trying to figure out where to put it. Right. A lot of the advertising it seems was driven by tune in advertising, movies, streaming services. I'm sure that was probably the case early for you. Is that, is that evolving over time? Because we, we all say we want to, we want to get to a place where that's like the, the new ad hub and shopping and all those things. But what's it look like, that evolution?
- [03:59]
Charlotte Mainnes
Yeah, yeah. So certainly when we started. So I was on the team that founded the Fire TV advertising business back in 2018 and and originally it was just a great way for, you know, HBO to put Game of Thrones in front of a customer. Right. Like that's something. Watch. And so let's make sure that we provide our partners a way to get great content in front of customers. And that's where we began. But what we discovered, you know, both just from seeing the super powerful results that these media and entertainment advertisers were able to attain on Fire TV as well as connected tv. More and more budget advertising budget shifting from linear to connected tv. So we're like, this is also a way to, you know, through product updates like sequential storytelling or retargeting and, or just the incremental reach that we offer by again being in the UI versus a customer having to go into an app. We're like, this is, this is a great discovery experience with, for a video ad, a video ad asset that brands would want to, you know, get in front of customers, not just media partners.
- [05:02]
Mike Shields
So at that point in 2018, you probably figure out who do I talk to? Who's the, where's the, where's the budget going to come for this? I imagine that's changed over time too, completely.
- [05:10]
Charlotte Mainnes
Yeah, yeah. Now it's just like, oh, you know, here you're going to buy a streaming TV ad buy, that's great. But let me tell you how to get 1.9 times the incremental reach of that buy. Attached Fire TV.
- [05:21]
Mike Shields
Same buyer, same advertiser.
- [05:22]
Charlotte Mainnes
Exactly.
- [05:23]
Mike Shields
Okay, so let's talk about. There's a lot of excitement around in general Shoppable tv. It's coming. There's a lot of, a lot of experimentation. That real estate seems very well suited for that. Talk to me about what you're doing there and then how it might connect with Alexa. Alexa plus what's going on there? Yeah, yeah, there's a lot in that question.
- [05:38]
Charlotte Mainnes
Yeah, no, for sure. I mean, of course, you know, being Amazon, we're always thinking about how to help brands, you know, who are Amazon partners get in front of customers in an authentic way. And certainly there's a lot of sponsored search and traditional ad like that. But then again with tv, with Alexa, these are these engaging surfaces that allow for both, you know, sort of display assets, kind of like static creative, you know, more akin to a typical sponsored ad, but then also the video asset.
- [06:05]
Mike Shields
Right.
- [06:05]
Charlotte Mainnes
So it's a really rich experience. And then when you pair that with the deep engagement that our customers have with these devices, it's a really natural story. So for example, with Alexa, and particularly now that We've launched Alexa plus, which is.
- [06:19]
Mike Shields
Does everybody know what Alexa probably should cover that.
- [06:20]
Charlotte Mainnes
Yeah, that's a great call. So Alexa plus, many, many people, many of the listeners, I'm sure have been using Alexa for years. You know, Alexa, what's the weather, Alexa, turn on lights. Well, now with Alexa plus, just forget about old Alexa. Aside from her, you know, sort of delightful intonation and we, she is now an LLM powered agentic AI experience. So you know, think of any other, you know, sort of gen AI or LLM solution you might use. That is what Alexa is. And offer her on both our audio only devices, but also our Echo devices where there's both a, a visual and audio component. And so you're able to participate in these very engaging conversations with her for things like planning a trip. Right. And the results come back and you know, you can sort of have this dialogue that includes images, we talk about conversational search.
- [07:10]
Mike Shields
This is the version of that. And with voice.
- [07:12]
Charlotte Mainnes
Exactly, exactly. And so, and I guess just speaking for myself because I've been using Alexa for a really long time now, it's just, it's a game changer. Like not only can, you know, she help with things like planning a trip or trav that sort of thing, but just in terms of, because of her deep connections with all of my Amazon, you know, sort of how I use Amazon.
- [07:30]
Mike Shields
All your touch points.
- [07:30]
Charlotte Mainnes
Yeah, she knows, she knows me, she knows my family, she has our schedule. So like, you know, on Sunday night we're going through a checklist of what I need for the boys for the week and like, oh my gosh, what day is, you know, karate. I can't even remember. And she's like, you know, don't worry about it. You don't have to send the stuff until Tuesday. Right. Like, these are the kind of conversations I'm having with her. And you can imagine that there's a lot of moments for brands to be part of that and really authentically connect in these moments. Much more, you know, considered and specific moments than just sort of a, well, let me just, you know, kind of target a demographic.
- [08:01]
Mike Shields
Okay. So when it comes to can do we want to connect the dots to no point in time to connect to TV because there's the, there's the shopping opportunity on during watching programming. Right. Everyone's trying lots of different ad types there. Then there's the shopping opportunity on the, on the homepage, the operating system. I think people wonder how that's going to play out. Do you think Alexa is going to be super tied into that. Is it going to be voice driven remote something else?
- [08:26]
Podcast Host
Do we know yet?
- [08:26]
Mike Shields
It's like there's so many different directions it can go.
- [08:28]
Charlotte Mainnes
Yeah, I mean the way with the products that we have live today around shopping on Alexa and Fire tv, you know, they're very much voice first. And so anything that you could do on an Alexa device, you can do on a Fire tv. Maybe you need to activate your remote with your, you know, speak into your remote. But we are not, we're not limiting it to requiring remotes to click around to do, you know, shopping engagement behaviors. We have the ability for you to add to cart or purchase directly from the TV using the remote for your voice. And so, so it's certainly something that we want to be sure that we're offering advertisers and that we're making it easy. But I think at the same time we also recognize that being able to shop on your phone is very powerful. The Amazon app is, you know, a fantastic app. We all use it all the time. And so it's also about offering brands the opportunity to drive awareness and to drive intention. And higher. We see a lot of KPIs where there's things like higher downstream consideration. And so we have a number of case studies that we've put together around partners like Nissan or Defender Auto Autos as popular Coca Cola, where they're seeing significant lift in terms of these core metrics. Right. From doing these sort of awareness campaigns in Fire TV and Alexa.
- [09:39]
Mike Shields
So getting back to Fire tv, like what I'm sure it's been all over the place in terms of tactics and metrics that matter. What are, what are you seeing from some of these newer advertisers? Is it, is it mostly an awesome reach vehicle? Are they do. Are they looking at different kinds of downstream metrics? And I imagine the creative is evolving as well.
- [09:58]
Charlotte Mainnes
Yeah, yeah. So I think one of the things, things just to be clear on or reiterate, is that when you turn on your TV and for a brand who is advertising in the Fire TV ui, we have this hero placement, we call it the future rotator. And it takes up, you know, sort of the top half of your screen.
- [10:15]
Mike Shields
And it actually Big real estate push.
- [10:17]
Charlotte Mainnes
Exactly. And it expands and autoplays a video. So first of all, just in terms of the richness of the ad unit itself, it both takes the streaming TV commercial that a brand has already developed right. For their, you know, to run in stream and, but then it pairs with it, you know, kind of their hero shot, their, their Static display, creative, the movie poster style. Both of those assets are part of the experience and again it autoplays so you're capturing a customer, you know, sort of even if they go on to watch ad free svad. Right. And so just in terms of like that experience, you know that is really something that is driving some of these brand awareness lift that we're customer that you can't reach for that downstream consideration. But then tactically we are also seeing that again because of the way that we're able to interact with every customer. We are seeing that it's 1.9 time incremental reach for a streaming TV ad buy.
- [11:08]
Mike Shields
Right.
- [11:08]
Charlotte Mainnes
And 1.7 times for a prime video ad buy. So you're truly talking to customers that you are not talking to with your in stream ads.
- [11:16]
Mike Shields
Reaching the right audience on streaming TV.
- [11:18]
Podcast Host
Takes more than guesswork, it takes intelligence and SAO delivers. Savio is redefining what it means to be a modern media company where data technology and creator driven content work together to deliver real results at scale. At Its core is AppScience, the only company building audience segments for mobile and CTV behavioral data reaching over 70% of the US streaming households. How do you activate Sabio? Savio is platform agnostic, meaning you can run campaigns through your preferred DSP or tap into Sabio's proprietary platform. With its owned and operated creator television network, Sabio unites media data and culture giving brands a direct line to engaged authentic audiences. Savio's full stack approach, from ad serving to audience insights to creator content brings every piece of the media puzzle together. So campaigns don't just perform better, they connect deeper reach modern audiences with sabio, the media company built for how people stream, watch and connect. Learn more@sabioctv.com that's S A B ioctv.com.
- [12:15]
Mike Shields
Okay, huge theme here in the last, I guess the last year or so with Amazon for sure like you know we're full funnel, we're not if you think of us as a retail media player, a bottom funnel. No, there's a lot, we have so many different pieces. How do, how does like fire tv, Alexa, all these things kind of come together and help help kind of pull together that full funnel strategy and knowing person in all these different stages.
- [12:35]
Charlotte Mainnes
Yeah, well I think you know, and Paul was, was articulating it again this morning. The key is, is that because of Amazon's touch points across customers lives you are truly able to meet all of your objectives advertising through Amazon and the way we're going to do that for advertisers is leverage all of those touch points of which devices is a huge part. I mean just think about it at, at your home, I'm sure. I mean not to just assume you an Amazon customer.
- [13:01]
Mike Shields
We have a Fire tv.
- [13:02]
Charlotte Mainnes
I'm going to assume you're an Amazon customer. Good. You have a Fire TV. Thank you.
- [13:06]
Mike Shields
We have a lot of TVs but we definitely.
- [13:07]
Charlotte Mainnes
So you know. Well, when you were saying back to me the experience of the feature rotator, I was like, he's definitely, you know. He does, yeah, excellent. So anyway, but think about it, right? Like at least at my house, multiple times a day. Your house may be same if you've got three kids. The package, the Amazon package showing up on the doorstep, right. Captured in the ring doorbell. Customers go inside. They spend an average of 4.2 hours a day watching Fire TV in the US hours and hours are spent listening to audio on Alexa devices as well as engaging with the screened Echo devices. Right. This is just an opportunity to converse with and participate in customers lives in their homes in a way that nobody else can offer. And that is through our devices uniquely.
- [13:52]
Mike Shields
So do you think of over time, you know, we're talking about using that, that that home screen ad is like, you know, big splashy unit that everybody sees. Depending on the brand and the category, you'll know a lot about where people are in their funnel journey and be able to show them the right ad and whether they're on the, you know, the, the OS versus the podcast versus whatever. Like that's, that's the idea over time.
- [14:12]
Charlotte Mainnes
Yeah, I mean we already can, you know, partner pair the ads that you're seeing within Fire TV with a connected TV buy and understand, you know, kind of like again retargeting some of that sort of thing. Right. So within kind of more of the streaming ecosystem are able to turn the dials on that full funnel experience. But you're right, the vision would be that it would be something where, you know, you just, you're like, here's my goals across Amazon and we just go and figure out where and how to deliver it across all of those surfaces in a way that has the most efficient and pronounced reach and, and sort of your core.
- [14:46]
Mike Shields
KPIs realized, okay, got to talk about AI. Obviously it's, it's a mandate for every podcast I do, but it's also a big, a big theme here and it's coming the four way in a lot of different places. But in television it's sort of been fits and starts or there's A lot there, there's a lot of TV advertising is still bought and sold direct and through direct iOS that's changing. And then you know, there's a hesitancy for some brands to go crazy with creative on TV this early. What do you, where do you see? That's a big question again, where, where are things headed with connected TV and AI for in your, in your view?
- [15:18]
Charlotte Mainnes
Yeah, I mean for sure. You're, you're absolutely right. The gen is, is becoming foundational for certainly all of the work on our product roadmap. Right. And even looking back at this point a couple of years in, you know, there's a lot that we've already been able to unlock using that and I think that what our focus has been is a, is a couple of things. One is we're always looking to improve the end customer experience because through a better customer experience of course we're going to have more engaged customers delivering better outcomes for advertisers. And so we've really been leaning into using that for personalization and relevance of the content and ads that customers are seeing in their experience. And so we've really been able to, you know, kind of pull through with LLM based models and some of that. And also just the dynamic real time updates, you know, set customer segments in the old days would take, I don't know, they could take 48 hours to update. Right.
- [16:06]
Mike Shields
And even just pointing, trying to manipulate things to change.
- [16:10]
Charlotte Mainnes
Exactly. So now it's like, well now everything happens in real time. Oh, and it happens a hundred times better. So that's one example. But then separately, from the advertiser perspective, how can we simplify the creative process without, you know, trying to take on the creative controls, if you will. Like we are not in the business of trying to tell, you know, develop and tell your story. We're in the business of taking the story that you advertiser have crafted and created and making it very easy to turn into assets that can be run on our devices.
- [16:40]
Mike Shields
Right.
- [16:40]
Charlotte Mainnes
In Alexa Audio for example, we have a new, a new tool in using gen AI where an advertiser who has products on Amazon can literally provide the product. We call it Nason Product Product detail. And they can provide that. They can provide, you know, sort of guidance like tone and, and you know, tone of voice of the speaker and you know, kind of any core message they want to land, press, submit and then we go and scrape their product detail page which they've written. Right. That's not our content from there, it's coming from them. Insight, knowledge, customer reviews to see what customers love about the product, pull together, you know, bring in, bring in the, you know, the gen generated voice, some of the tone, et cetera. And within 30 seconds they have an audio ad that if you can listen to and if you like it, you could run it right then. Right. Like literally going from having to hire voice talent to a script to this to that, to a weeks long process for an ad that doesn't even have visual components to it and now literally in seconds.
- [17:37]
Mike Shields
So do you, do you think again it's really early. Do you think we're going to see is the more experimentation or are the small guys going to be more daring or do you think the big brands are going to take advantage of all these tools? You know they've got the, the, the precious messages and the, and the approval processes that are a little bit different. What do you think it's gonna look like?
- [17:53]
Charlotte Mainnes
Yeah, we're seeing both for sure. I mean, absolutely. You know the quote, little guys who were just creative was such a barrier just from a character. Yeah, like, I mean they don't have creative teams, they don't have. And so it just went from being something where they'd have to outsource and pick and choose and this and that. Now it's just like oh no. Like, I mean their uptake of that audio tool for example is just, is incredible. But what we've also seen is that for kind of the bigger brands that do have creative teams and do have, you know, the precious core messages that they work very hard on, these are also very enabling because you know, while they may have, they may have some of those, you know, sort of managed service relationships and kind of the go big activations which we support on Fire TV and I can talk about in a second but they also have an incredibly large part of their marketing budget dedicated to programmatic and self service as that's the way again on their end how they're going to participate in the full funnel most efficiently. And so from that perspective this is something where again they appreciate that we're not trying to take over kind of the creative aspect. We're just basically, you meet us where you are with the message you've created and we'll just make it easier from there.
- [18:57]
Mike Shields
All right, as we kind of sum things up here, what do you want to, what should brands take away from unbox, particularly from a device perspective? What's the big message or a couple takeaways for the audience?
- [19:06]
Charlotte Mainnes
Yeah, well I think at this point, you know, our team between upfronts, unboxed and everywhere in between. I think we've done a good job of sort of landing that Amazon offers a very comprehensive full funnel solution for advertisers and I think it's just understanding how, how critical devices is to delivering on that. And again it is, it's a combination of things. It is just the amount of engagement that we have with customers logged in, Amazon customers, valuable majority prime customers in their homes. And then it is the incremental experiences that devices can provide beyond you know, more typical sponsored search and, and that sort of thing. So that's both in stream TV commercials, but then it's also you know, sort of again the retargeting and the ability to capture outside of the in stream TV commercial in that captive sort of time that customers are engaging with their devices before they go in and start watching content. And then it's how we are able to, with these unique experiences like Alexa, we're really able to offer incremental, sort of unique to industry, unique to marketplace solutions. Whether it's, you know, using Genai and the LLM power of Alexa, Alexa, who is the industry's first ad opportunity in an agentic AI experience or in the case of Fire tv, you know, you've got this Takeover hero feature rotator experience and then you know, kind of to the point of some of those brands that are really investing in creative and really investing in messaging, we can create customer experiences that really engage customers. Like for example, we were able to do a custom execution where customers were actually able to use the remote and design a car. So they were able to pick, you know, sort of the interior color, the exterior color, et cetera, and then it resolved in a QR code that then just sent them directly to the auto manufacturer's website with those configurations already in place.
- [20:58]
Mike Shields
That's pretty wild.
- [20:59]
Charlotte Mainnes
So it's just sort of an example of how we can deliver the full spectrum anywhere from, you know, sort of product, typical sponsored ads that show up on the Alexa home screen all the way through to these custom executions on Fire TV and Alexa.
- [21:12]
Mike Shields
I feel bad for old Alexa. She's been cast aside. I hope she's got some kind of useful future.
- [21:17]
Charlotte Mainnes
She was the inspiration for Alexa to pioneer Charlotte.
- [21:21]
Mike Shields
Awesome stuff. Great conversation. Thanks so much for doing this and let's do this again sometime.
- [21:25]
Charlotte Mainnes
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for the time. I appreciate it.
- [21:27]
Podcast Host
Thanks again to my guest this week, Amazon, Charlotte Mainnes and my partners at Elemental TV and sabio. If you like this episode, please take a moment to rate and leave a review.
- [21:35]
Mike Shields
Lots more to bring you.
- [21:36]
Podcast Host
So please hit that subscribe button and we'll see you next time. For more on what's nexty Media. Thanks for listening.