Loading summary
A
Hello and welcome to the CPG Guys podcast.
B
Set at the intersection of commerce and tech, your hosts, Sree Rajagopelan and Peter Vs. Bond explore how brands and retailers engage consumers in a digitally driven world. And now, here are the CPG Guys.
A
Hello and welcome to this very special upfront episode of the CPG Guys podcast. I am your humble co host, pbsb, who also moonlights his head of industry and client engagement at Flywheel, the commerce acceleration division of Omnicom. I am joined, as always, by my ride or die bff. He is the Butch Cassidy to my Sundance, the Batman to my Robin. He is the chief revenue officer at Think Blue Consulting, father of pop stars Lara Raj, of Katseye and Rhea Raj. And he, he is the man known as Sree. Sree, how you doing, man? What's going on?
C
What an exciting day. Got to see Amazon up front. The whole event live. It was just fabulous, Peter. But I gotta ask you something, right? Do you have. By calling us Butch Cassidy in the Sundance Kid, why not go with the magnificent seven or McKenna's gold?
A
How about Thelma and Louise?
C
How about Thelma and Louise?
A
Okay, we'll go with Thelma. But wait a minute. They drove off a cliff. Sri. That wasn't good.
C
My parents in the 70s made us watch all these Hollywood blockbuster osc winning movies.
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
C
Even though I was like five years old. McKenna's gold. I've seen it five times.
A
Good stuff. All good stuff. Well, Sree, we're, we're getting together. We're recording this fairly late at night because you and I had the distinct honor and privilege to participate in the 2026Amazon upfront event which took place at the Beacon Theater on the west side of Manhattan. It was a star studded event and it was attended by advertisers, some agencies, and we got very, very special media attention as part of the press. We were very grateful to our friends at Amazon for granting us that status. As you'll see, we'll also put in the digital show notes of this episode, a link to all the photos that I had an opportunity to take from my great vantage point. But it was a, from beginning to end, it was a very tight two hours. We'll talk about how that transpired and who made great appearances. I was. When one person walked on stage, I thought I was going to win a car. May give you a little bit of a hint, but it didn't happen. It was, it was phenomenal. And it, as always, the event, you know, the event is about to close when our when our friend Alan Moss appears on stage and thanks everybody for coming. But they, they ran it like clockwork. We were out even a couple of minutes early, Sree. But I thought what we do in this episode is you and I will kind of break down what we saw. I will say this, Sree, it was an impressive evening. Amazon's the top of their game. Just the top of their game.
C
Peter. I too would like to take a minute and thank Amazon Communications team for inviting us as part of the present media, to actually watch upfront Live. This event is obviously meant for those that are investing with Amazon ads, which are CMOs agencies and, you know, the larger. Those that have larger investments on Amazon ads to come and see the entire suite of programming they have available via streaming tv, which is absolutely fabulous.
A
Yeah, Allison, Allison and Eric particular shout out to you guys for, for making this happen. We talked about it at CES earlier this year and you lived up to your, to your offer. We could not be more appreciative of the fact that you welcomed us in as press.
C
Does that mean, Peter, we're now committed to going to accelerate?
A
Yeah, I think that pretty much says we're all in between that and of course, Unboxed, which is in San Francisco this year.
C
Looking forward, looking forward to both of those, Peter. So why don't I kick this off, Peter, and get right into it and we'll just go through the whole programming. Right? And Peter, before I do that, take a couple minutes, tell our audience, especially those investing on Amazon ads, what is this event? Give us some details. What is this event about? Who comes, how long does it last? Why is it consequential in the year, given it's happening early May.
A
Yeah. So this is transpiring at a time of the year that all of the other traditional media publishers think the traditional network, cbs, abc, NBC, they hold their upfront events. This is where historically what would happen is a network would gather together all of its affiliates and its ad big advertisers and a lot of ad agencies, and they would run them through what the fall schedule is going to be for all their big TV shows. So they trot out the stars, they talk about some of their tried and true shows that were returning, and they would introduce new shows. So it was a great way to get advertisers to do advanced buys. That was the real goal. Now, obviously with Amazon Prime, Amazon is producing a tremendous amount of content. So not linear television, but still the goal here is to get advertisers and their agencies excited about investing in all of their media properties. So they walked us through a lot of their properties, be it sports, entertainment, music, movies, videos and even Twitch. You know, we had Sarah Yost. Remember we talked to her back at ces. She appeared in commercials that were interspersed between the conversations.
B
And.
A
And she was doing that with Summer House's Paige Sorbo, who made her claim to fame on that Bravo show. But it was very much about getting people excited about the properties. And whereas Amazon Unboxed is very much about. Here are all the great tools we have, here are the ways you can advertise much more. The technical. This was more about get excited about our properties and we'll tell you a little bit about our capabilities. But really come back to Unboxed in the fall and we'll wow you with all of our marketing, our clean room, Amazon marketing cloud, our audience targeting and all of that. So that's what the event was all about. Lots of CMOs in the room, lots of brands, a bunch of agencies and all the Amazon execs. As we walked over from the restaurant where Flywheel was hosting a party, I passed five or six other restaurants and they all were hosting Amazon pre upfront event. So they basically took over the whole neighborhood. It was a real shindig from beginning to end.
C
All right, so let me get into programming, if you're good with it.
A
Yeah, by all means.
C
So here's how the program kicks off, which was close to my heart. I'm not so sure it was close to the audience's heart, at least the first part of the music programming. So it kicks off with a 32nd concert by Diplo and I'm like, wow, Diplo Live. Everyone gets to watch a 30 minute. I'm sorry, 30 minute concert by Diplo. Right. You gotta go to either Vegas and pay premium dollars to go to a nightclub to do it when he has a residency, or you gotta go to a big festival of some sort of like Coachella on the EDM stage. Right? This is the guy that charges half a million dollars for a 30 second set. It's got billions of streams. And he played hit after hit remixed and he could not get the audience in the room to get up and dance, cheer as loud and go in. I'm thinking to myself, there were, there were people.
A
Don't. That's not true. There were, there were people dancing.
C
I'm not. It's not a net zero.
A
It was a small percentage, but there were people dancing.
C
20%. And I'm thinking to myself, corporate settings. Then we get to the second performer who only had three songs. Close to my heart as well. I listened to three country performers. One was Cart Najo back in the days. Shabuzzi. I'm a big fan of Shabuzzi. And then Casey Musgraves and who comes on stage? Casey Musgraves. And I'm like, wow. I got a free 40 minute concert today of Diplo and Casey Musgraves. And she bought an A game, Peter.
A
Yeah, she sure did. Well, not to be outdone, but they brought out the big gun right from the beginning. Who steps out on stage? You win a car. You win a car. You win a car. It was Oprah. Oprah announced that her podcast is coming on to Amazon. She talked about all the content they're doing. The, the crowd went wild for Oprah. I mean, she really, really delivered with, with her appearance on stage. It was quite the show. I mean, they, they didn't say that for the end. They just right after the music, they decided they were going to lean in and lean in hard with the queen herself. So phenomenal appearance by Oprah. Back to you, Sri. What happened next, Peter?
C
What's the consequence? Why was Oprah on stage? Her podcast, Oprah Podcast is getting on Amazon.
B
At the CPG guys, we're excited to partner with today's sponsor, Confido. Think about how many different workflows your team is managing right now. Your sales team is planning promotions in a spreadsheet. Your finance team is manually managing deductions from a dozen different retailer portals. Your ops team is building forecasts in a totally separate tool. When something changes, a promotion shifts. A big deduction comes in. Nobody finds out until it's already a problem. Most CPG brands are running these processes in silos. And the cost isn't just time. It's the decisions that don't get made or get made on bad information. Confido is the end to end platform for CBG operations built seamless specifically for brands to run. All of it in one place. Trade promotion, management, deductions disputes, sales forecasting, demand planning, and retail analytics. When your trade events are connected to your forecasts and your deductions are automatically matched to your promotions, your whole team is finally working from the same picture. Over 200 CPG brands, including Olipop, Bear Bells, and Simple Mills, already use it. Go to confidotech.com cpg guys to learn more. That's confidotech.com cpg guys
A
yeah, it's a big deal. It's a huge deal. You know, she's been Making a lot of press. She recently interviewed the woman made famous by the Coldplay incident in Boston. She. She has got a huge audience and she is bringing her platform to further amplify on Amazon. She's also doing a couple of other things with them as well. So Oprah is all in with Amazon. That was, that was my takeaway.
C
I know, it was so clear. And she kept talking about when she started in 1875 about a smile.
A
She was very self deprecating. She was very self deprecating.
C
People have to Google and see what the significance of 1875. But then we spent quite a bit of time listening to the importance of Twitch for advertising. Which I gotta say, depending on the brand that you are, if you want to get a younger audience gaming Twitch is a platform you got to be on.
B
It's.
A
And it's beyond just gaming now, Shree. It really is about streaming live. That is the essence of Twitches. It's not just about gaming.
C
You and I have to encourage CMOs, brands, advertisers, those running media, not just retail media. Yeah, Twitch needs to be in your strategy to get a below 30 audience. You know, we keep saying below 30, below 20. Twitch became popular when the today's 35s were 20 and they still are on Twitch. It's gotta be part of your strategy. And who did they bring out to have this whole conversation on Twitch? Sierra Wackwezoff.
A
Yeah. Yeah, it was pretty impressive, Sree. But Twitch is a legitimate platform. If you're not there, you're missing a core demographic that has buying power. And it's frankly where you need to go, where your consumers are. If all you do is just wait in the places you've always been and hope they come to you. Hope is not a strategy when it comes to advertising. I think we, no doubt about it,
C
hope is never a strategy. But you know, man lives on hope. But that said Peter, tell us next about who was the star they put on stage that talked about interacting live with fans on Twitch.
A
All right, so not someone that I am horribly familiar with sri, but it was Ice Spice and talked at length about interacting from a chateau with fans. It was quite a live stream engagement. She said, listen, they get to see me not as the finished product, but as I'm doing it and producing it in real time. So she likes engaging, you know, which
C
family listens to it. I spice a lot. And also inspired, you know, when she was new in her career, early 2000 and 20s, 21 who admired her Rhea Raj and Laura Raj.
A
Not Surprising. Not surprising at all. So and so for me again, Peter.
C
Hold on, Peter. I got to say this man. As Papa Raj. We start with Diplo. Then we get to Casey Musgraves. Then I got to see Tierra Wack from Twitch. Then I get to see Ice Spice. By now I'm like mega excited for how the rest of the event was going to be. And it did not disappoint. Peter. So what was next?
A
I think they threw me, Oprah, just to keep, you know, an old codger like me.
C
Give you Casey Musgraves. Did you know Casey Musgraves?
A
I did not. Honestly. Listen, you and I both know that if, if the artist came after John Mayer other than like Taylor Swift, there's, there's a high likelihood. I don't know who they are, regardless of their genre. Anyway, what happens? So, so next they shift from Twitch to sports and they go heavy on sports. They start with Thursday Night Football. And who comes on.
C
Yes, exactly.
A
Who comes on to do the song? Okay, you just stole. You stole my thunder. Sree. It's.
C
Sorry, Peter. I have a picture with him. It was.
A
I know. I know you do.
C
Peter, did you get to see one song, two songs like what happened? What did he sing about?
A
He just, he just talked about football and he talked and they. And then after that, Karissa Thompson came out. The, the sportscaster talked about Thursday Night Football, brought out her colleagues wit and fits and talked about Black Friday. They said that the, the opening football game for Thursday Night Football was going to be the Buffalo Bills. And I'm trying to remember who they were playing, but it's a.
C
It's a big game.
A
It'll be a big game. Big game. It's a big game.
C
So Peter, I want to heavy on this area for a little bit of time here, right? I've had the chance to meet the entire Thursday Night Football crew. The fourth person missing was Richard Sherman, but they had him. Richard Sherman pinged him live and talked to him as well, if you remember. Via. I do remember that, but that. So Peter, let's hang out here for a little bit. Right? So you have Shabuzi come in. Singer, Thursday Night Football. The actual team, I think, to Thursday Night Football. We'll see if that's the way it works out. Then you have host for Thursday Night Football, Cherry Sir Thompson, along with the other co hosts, right, The LA Rams defensive guy who you remember crying on the field after winning the Super Bowl. Chris Medworth. None other than Mr. Fitz, Ryan Fitzpatrick themselves. And what did they announce you know, the CPG guys are doing the right thing by doing the CPG Guys podcast. When Ryan Fitzpatrick and Chris Wentworth stand over there and say, we're starting a podcast called Fits and Wit.
A
Fits and Wit?
C
Yeah. You think, you think we have the same scale?
A
Peter, I think that you and I were in real time texting each other about how do the CPG guys make it into the Amazon podcast family. And I don't think it's by doing what we're doing and just moving it over there. I think you and I have some really good ideas that we're going say B was important. I'm saying that I think you and I can help contribute to the conversation the way that more as a B2B, I think our audience would be more focused on the advertisers large and small that are. That are selling through Amazon. But I think don't be surprised if the CPG guys start to appear in the Amazon universe around podcasting.
C
That's true. Now we're about halfway through. Peter has clearly said don't be surprised if we begin to appear, obviously podcasting. While we started this to kill time, it's become almost a full time job for Peter and me. We're talking to Huzoo in the industry. But at the halfway time, here's what dawns on me, right? They talk about this very important thing, AI powered defensive alerts in football, how their partnership with NASCAR is growing, NBA use of AI for demand signals across the board. Correspondingly, in their partnership for ads and sports and streaming tv and something close to my heart, Peter, which you have promised me you're going to get me there some year. What is this golf tournament?
A
I think it's called the Gusta Georgia. Yeah. They did. They did. Yeah, I know.
C
Thank you.
A
But Peter, Sree, we've got a real tough schedule next year because we seem to have to need to work in the Masters. South by Southwest. We have to work impossible. And we have to work in Bravo Con. What happened to the derby and the. Oh, the Kentucky. See, it's the one thing on that list.
C
I've never been bucket list,
A
Sree. I don't. We're gonna. Some things are gonna have to fall off the list, Sree. I think we're gonna have to do a rationalization of our schedule for next year.
C
One other thing I want to. I want to mention a few other things on sports, Peter.
A
Eight games and a partnership with the Blue Devils. Duke is going to be a focus for their NC men's basketball coverage.
C
If you're an advertiser. Now, Peter, let's recap the halfway mark. You get Oprah exclusively on Amazon streaming. You have Twitch, the gaming platform where you can interact. Sports is a focus. And what are we talking about? Masters debut, nascar, Caitlin Clark in WNBA and of course Thursday Night Football. How are you feeling right now about streaming TV advertising, Peter?
A
Sree? There was a stat that came out at one point during the conversation. I think it was at the end, Alan Moss said that 90%, 90% of the US audience is reachable through Amazon. And when they put up all of their ecosystem partners, Tubi, Paramount, Netflix, all of them, they just have a powerhouse.
C
I want to take a second, Peter, and mention right there, four weeks ago we had an episode with somebody you just mentioned. Who was it?
A
It was Tubi.
C
Tubi, yeah.
A
Yeah. We talked to Chris Grillo and PepsiCo's Kaitlin Windsor and it was very clear that they had built a powerful audience. They're plugged into the Amazon ecosystem. That means Amazon marketing cloud, the ability to build and measure audiences. There is no question in my mind, Sree, absolutely no question.
C
I have a simple question for you.
A
The place to advertise, to reach audiences, it's Amazon. It just, it's Amazon.
C
We talk about it as retail media, but is Amazon ads retail media anymore?
A
It's commerce media. It's not just retail media.
C
So if you thought about media in general, doesn't Amazon now, at least in your and my eyes, Amazon ads become one of the most powerful on the most powerful across the board media vehicle available to a brand, Period?
A
Of course, because they, and it's not just the size of the audience they bring, it's truly the full funnel aspect of that sri. It's owned in operated properties, but it's programmatic, it's streaming tv. It's all there. And they can measure it. They can measure it. It's enormous.
C
They talk quite a bit about the measurement angle, which we're not going to cover in deep detail over here because we do that all year in conversations as it is. And then to close out the sports section, there's somebody sitting in the audience, somebody very special from where I live. Super bowl winner 2021, Mr. Matthew Stafford himself. I thought Ryan Fitzpatrick was hilarious when he called him Matt. Does not like to be called Matt.
B
Does not.
C
He's Matthew Stafford.
A
But it was, they traded a couple of what I think were well scripted barbs, but it was all, all in good fun. And he jumped up on Matthew Stafford, jumped up on stage and joined them and talked A lot about what they were doing.
C
So who's who, Peter, who's who? What an exciting event to be at. But again, it shows the power of Amazon ads. If you're a brand advertiser, this is now an ecosystem that's delivering 24. 7 for you. And then, Peter, kick us off. We move to shows. What do we start off with? A show called Off Campus.
A
Yeah. That they went through a whole litany of shows. They talked about some of the great success of shows like the Summer I Turned Pretty and other ones. They made it very clear we are the place where young teens and romantic women go to consume content. They were very, very clear about they. That women looking for romantic content. Amazon prime is the place to do it. That was so abundantly clear as they went through show by show by show of everything they've got set up.
C
And so I want to talk about some of those shows. Right. So it kicks off with a discussion about off campus, which is a big show. Chris comes on board. But the one that touched my heart was Michael Jordan. Not Michael Jordan. The wa.
A
Michael B. Jordan. Michael B. Jordan of Thomas. You know where. Do you remember what he started with? Not a lot of people know this. He started on Friday Night Lights.
C
I actually know that. Yep. Yeah.
A
He was in the last two seasons of the show. But he's. He has been in so many phenomenal movies, from big blockbusters like Black Panther to obviously all of the Creed movies. And he came on stage to basically say, I am here with Amazon. And it was like one after another. You thought he'd just come up and talk about, I'm doing this project. He goes, but I got another. But Sree, I think you want to talk about the one that is probably most anticipated and made the biggest sensation on stage.
C
So who walks out on stage? The wife of Muhammad Ali.
A
Her son, Lonnie Ali. Yeah, she.
C
What does she talk about a show about her husband and goes, this is the past. It's called them. I think. I believe it's called the Muhammad Ali Affair. I might not.
A
No, it's. It's called the Greatest.
C
The Greatest.
A
The Greatest.
C
Why are we debating he's the greatest?
A
But, yeah, and Michael. There's no debate that. Michael G.B. jordan said, Listen, there have been a lot of documentaries on Muhammad Ali, none of. None of which had the full blessing of the family. And that's when he brought out Lottie and said, this is under her blessing. I am so grateful that she trusts me to help bring this to life. And so he went through that he went through some other shows. He's launching a new show called Delphi, which is from the Apollo and Adonis Creed multiverse, and talked about creating some new boxing personalities coming through the famous Delphi Boxing Studio. And. And he made a really interesting comment.
C
Sri like a community, like, almost like somebody coming from the community becoming a boxer.
A
He said something that resonated with a lot of the talent and some of the people that are in production. He said this show is purposely being produced in Los Angeles. We're not doing it in Toronto, we're not doing it in Vancouver. We're doing it in LA, where it belongs. He says this is a show about la. It will be produced in la. And that got a lot of applause from the audience. A lot of you, you know, LA has. If you go to LA these days, you see that production is all but dried up there. They're getting. They're getting their clocks cleaned by other regions, particularly north of the border in Vancouver and Toronto sucked up a lot of. A lot of TV shows. And he said, no, no, we're doing this in la. And he was very, very proud to say that. So some interesting conversations.
C
I'm grateful for that, Peter. It's the city I live in. I'm grateful they're trying to bring back production. I do think it's a big deal. You're 100% right. A lot of production and everyday jobs have already left due to the high cost of operating in California. But it's great to see him talk that between the Muhammad Ali the Greatest and the new Delphi boxing series. I'm just going to recap again, Peter. So we start up top with none other than Oprah declaring, I'm going to be exclusive on Amazon. I mean, what a big deal. Then we get into Twitch and gaming. I'm thinking advertiser here for a second. From there, we get into sports as a focus. And they have TNF and all these other tournaments, including things close to my heart, like the Masters that I want to go. You get Matthew Stafford to wrap up the sports segment. Then you start the whole shows. You talk about how the romantic era, romantic genre of shows are going to be on Amazon now. Then you have these two on boxing, which are like legendary. Touch your heart.
A
Let's not forget Chris Pratt, because that was important. Chris Pratt produces the Terminalist. And that is a very, very popular book series that's been turned into a TV show. And. And Chris was. He was out on stage for quite a while talking about his partnership with Amazon. So, you know, You've got that genre, but you're right. Michael B. Jordan came out, dazzled us with everything. And just when you think you've seen it all you've had, they brought out the big guns. Chris Pratt, Matthew Stafford, Oprah Winfrey, Casey Musgraves. Nope, they're not done. Sri.
C
Oh, hold on, Peter, before you get to that, I think we forgot somebody right up front. There were only two people from Amazon who spoke at this event who kicked it off. Peter, we forgot to mention that.
A
Oh, well, our dear friend Tanner Elton, who is from episode 500, was the first one out on stage.
C
What does he do for him?
A
He is the head of US Advertising sales.
C
He's the one who came out. Now tell us what happened to close it out.
A
Yeah. So usually the sign that Amazon upfront is coming to a close is when our friend Alan Moss shows up on stage and he kind of gives his summary. And he started doing the summary and I started packing up my bag. I put my camera away. I figured I'd gotten everything I needed, but I was wrong. Who comes out on stage to. To. To basically bump Alan off and say, no, no, no, no, no. I, I've got something to talk about. He terminated. He terminated Alan's speech, said, no, no, I'm going to talk about the man with the. The man with the bag. It was Arnold, the governator. He came out on stage, you know, so. Yes, yes.
C
How did they get Arnold to come on stage and talk about 2.8 billion impressions playing Santa Claus?
A
Here's what I'll tell you about, Al, about Arnold Schwarzenegger. When he comes out on stage, he's got his four, three or four points that he is going to cover. And he's not just going to say it once. He's not going to say it twice. He's going to say it six times. He is not going to let you leave that room without having indelibly burned in your memory the fact that the man with the Bag will premiere on Amazon prime on December 2nd, everybody.
C
December 2nd. I've wrote that down.
A
December 2nd, a date which will live in infamy.
C
Absolutely. And that Alan talked about. One more stat, Peter, that I want to quote out for advertisers, right? Alan Moss Talked about the 17% more prime watching hours year over year this time compared to last year, which means they are gaining more audience. When you have this sort of a star cast across the board on streaming tv, of course you're going to gain the audience. So, Peter, now let's recap. Take us through. You're an advertiser, Peter. You just came out, you're going to have a board meeting.
A
Yeah, here's what. If I'm an advertiser, I'm seeing this room. It is really hitting me. The powerhouse content that Amazon prime has on its platform coupled with the fact that all of the other platforms of consequence are are making their content available through Amazon, notably Amazon Marketing Cloud for building audiences and being able to measure performance. So you can advertise on Tubi, you can advertise on Twitch, you can advertise on Paramount, and guess what? Amazon can tell you whether any of that led to conversion is absolutely impressive. If I'm an advertiser, my first place to go for scale, for performance, full funnel. It's Amazon Sree. I mean, it's that simple. It's Amazon.
C
So if you're a brand, I have to conclude, Peter, being full funnel, having that lower funnel, closing the deal ability at a general merchandise. Now imagine, Peter, of course they have ambient food packaged goods. When they get into fresh and frozen, imagine the power this is going to be as an advertiser for fresh grocery.
A
So let's talk a little bit about that because I think we all know that they retreated from their Amazon Fresh platform. They said, okay, we're not going to do that. They still are in Whole Foods, but they've also decided that they're going to craft regional partnerships with existing brick and mortar grocery retailers saying, listen, we have the distribution channel for Last mile delivery. You have very deep personal relationships on a local level with consumers. That's their strategy. They don't have to sell fresh groceries themselves. They have to make fresh groceries available from local retailers through their platform. That is how they are going to tackle the people down in Northwest Arkansas. So I think they are very close to having solved the problem on how they take on the nation's largest grocery retailer, Walmart.
C
All right, Peter, that was awesome. So my quick summary is going to literally last a minute over here, but I'm just going to leave it with a mic drop moment. Streaming tv, you get Oprah, you get Ryan Fitzpatrick and Whit now with a new podcast, but you have tons of sport and Thursday Night Football, you got show after show, which we've just declared. You got two blockbuster shows in boxing coming up, followed by the man with the Bug. I'll be back on December 2nd. And you got Twitch. Win, win, win, win, win. Streaming tv. I'm not so sure our audience gets it. Streaming TV now on Amazon needs to be part of your media mix. End of story, period. Close us out, please.
A
Yeah, yeah. To our to our friends at Amazon, as I mentioned earlier, Allison and Eric, for making sure that we we were given press credentials to attend this event. And of course to our friends Paul Kotis, who didn't appear on stage, but he's always there in spirit. Alan Moss, Tanner Elton and so many others. We are incredibly grateful for your friendship and your availability to work with us on so many things. You know, we talked about Sarah Yost. She didn't see her on stage, but she was on the screen in all of her little vignette commercials with paid Sorbo. It was an event to be reckoned with. I think anyone else who's doing their upfronts this week, as most of them are, they're up against something pretty impressive right out of the gate on Monday. Big event Sree. Big event. Sri as always, thank you for taking time to do this with me. This is one of those seminal events in our industry where we knew we just had to not only just be there and participate, but actually provide a recap to our audience. This is a very big event in our industry and Amazon delivered against everything that we thought it would. Thanks as always for joining us to our audience. Thank you for the likes the follows we now have over almost 45,000 followers on LinkedIn. We're so grateful that you turn to us to be educated and entertained about the industry. If you are so inclined and you're on Apple or Spotify in particular, leave us a rating. Getting a 5 rating really helps make our podcast more findable by industry contemporary, so we really do appreciate you doing that. Thanks for taking time out of your week to listen to this very special episode. We look forward to speaking with you on the next episode of the CPGuys podcast.
D
The content in this podcast episode is provided for general informational purposes only. By listening to our episode, you understand that no information contained in this episode should be construed as advice from CPG Guys, LLC where the individual author, hosts or guests, nor is it intended to be a substitute for research on any subject matter. Reference to any specific product or entity does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation by CPGuys LLC. The views expressed by guests are their own and their appearance on the program does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent. The views expressed by CPTGuys LLC do not represent the views of their employers or the entity they represent. CPT Guys, LLC expressly disclaims any and all liability or responsibility for any direct, indirect, incidental special consequential or other damages arising out of any individual's use of, reference to, or inability to use this podcast or the information we present in this podcast.
Hosts: Peter V.S. Bond (“PBSB”), Sri Rajagopalan
Episode Date: May 13, 2026
Event: Amazon Upfront 2026, Beacon Theater, Manhattan
The CPG Guys deliver an in-depth, real-time recap of the Amazon Upfront 2026—an annual showcase for advertisers, agencies, and media professionals. Peter and Sri, having attended as press, break down Amazon’s latest content, advertising capabilities, and star-studded moments, underscoring Amazon’s transformation into a powerhouse media platform, far beyond its retail roots.
[04:41]
[07:22 – 08:52]
[08:52 – 11:54]
[11:57 – 13:53]
[14:34 – 21:48]
[19:34 – 21:03], [22:23 – 23:00]
[22:23 – 26:05]
[28:08 – 29:31]
[31:16]
| Topic | Timestamp | |---------------------------------------------|----------------| | Introduction, event context | 00:20 – 04:41 | | Explaining the Amazon Upfront | 04:41 – 07:17 | | Diplo & Kacey Musgraves performances | 07:22 – 08:52 | | Oprah’s exclusive podcast announcement | 08:52 – 11:49 | | Twitch as a rising media channel | 11:57 – 13:53 | | Sports focus, Thursday Night Football | 14:34 – 21:48 | | Amazon’s media strategy & measurement | 19:34 – 23:00 | | Scripted originals: Michael B. Jordan, etc. | 23:00 – 27:40 | | Chris Pratt, the closing segment | 27:40 – 28:08 | | Arnold Schwarzenegger & event wrap-up | 28:08 – 30:04 | | Amazon’s grocery strategy | 31:16 – 32:20 | | Recap, final thoughts | 32:20 – 33:01 |
The CPG Guys position Amazon as the most compelling, holistic platform for brands seeking scale, data-driven performance, and diverse reach. This recap cements Amazon’s shift from retail disruptor to global media juggernaut, ready for the next generation of consumers, advertisers, and entertainment.
For photos and more context, see the show notes at cpgguys.com.