Prime Numbers
A pitch deck procured by ADWEEK indicates that Amazon will soon begin allowing far more granular contextual targeting for Prime Video inventory.
Currently, advertisers can target Prime Video based on genre, like horror, action or sports. The new targeting parameters will also blend audience and media characteristics, such as “female voices,” “top trending,” “high-income households” and “Coviewing.”
There is no release date, but the deck says Amazon will tag every show and movie in Prime Video with more than 700 bits of metadata to contextualize the media. Amazon will also create and ingest transcripts, outlines of plots, synopses and more to further improve its contextual targeting.
“Instead of having an audience strategy where you can target people based on who they are, they’re taking the content and building an audience strategy from that, which gives them more scope to pull lots of content into that grouping,” says one marketer who saw the pitch.
Presumably, the new product will juice the value of Prime’s long-tail content, since it places impressions within valuable buckets (high-income viewers, say) even when marketers aren’t familiar with a given show.
Don’t Let Streams Be Dreams
Publishers like Netflix, Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery have finally started seeing a profit from their streaming service investments.
But navigating all the new subscriber tiers and bundles is getting harder for consumers to manage, argues The Wall Street Journal.
The average number of streaming subscriptions per household jumped sharply in recent years, from just under two in 2018 to almost five in 2025.
And those households are signing up for more services than they’re canceling – especially during Q4 of last year, when streaming services picked up a combined 13.9 million subscribers.
What’s not included in the WSJ’s reporting, however, is how consumers feel about all of these subscriptions.
For that, see recent coverage in Variety of a Deloitte survey, which found that the average video streaming customer in the US spends $69 a month, almost half of whom (47%) believe is too much.
So yes, streamers might be doing better than ever these days from one perspective. But the other shoe could always drop – especially considering that YouTube, which already accounts for more TV-viewing time in the US than any other service, is free to watch.
The Hard(ware) Part
When push comes to shove, generative AI and large language model operators are just software companies, not some new magical category of thinking machine.
But the thing about consumer software is that it must build into existing operating systems. And thus companies like OpenAI are still deeply beholden to the mobile operating systems of Google and Apple.
So it’s no surprise that OpenAI has acquired io, the hardware startup founded by Jony Ive, who’s best known for previously being Apple’s longtime hardware design leader. Ive will now lead product design at OpenAI, including for ChatGPT’s user interface, Bloomberg reports.
But the plan is to eventually release OpenAI’s own hardware.
Meta is probably the primary example of this trend, having partnered with Ray-Ban on new lines of glasses. Meta also created Portal video devices, not to mention the fact that it, you know, rebranded the entire company to “Meta” in an attempt to grow its virtual reality OS.
It’s worth noting, though, that Meta’s moves were probably less about promoting growth and VR headset sales than an attempt to get out from under Apple’s thumb.
But Wait! There’s More
Amazon joins the Prebid party. Now if only Google AdX would also integrate. [AdMonsters]
Publicis Groupe strikes again with its acquisition of influencer marketing platform Captiv8, which has a network of 15 million creators globally. [release]
How publishers are testing agentic AI. [Digiday.
“For years, Apple behaved as if its control over the iOS ecosystem were ordained by divine right and could not be constrained,” writes Eric Seufert. But Apple’s reckoning is here. [Mobile Dev Memo]
If CMO jobs are really going away, what replaces them? [ADWEEK]
Another round of so-called work performance-based layoffs might be coming to Meta. [Business Insider]
Shopify launched an AI-powered store builder. [TechCrunch]
Microsoft’s AI security chief accidentally livestreamed internal messages about the company’s AI collaboration with Walmart after being interrupted by protestors during a live event. [The Verge]
You’re Hired!
Retail media tech specialist Zitcha hires Alberto Vergara as its head of data and AI. [release]
WPP appoints Marie-Claire Barker as global chief people officer. [ADWEEK]
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