Getty Image / Artur Widak
For the first time in NFL history, there will be a game played the day after the Thanksgiving, referred to as “Black Friday” due to the amount of commerce that takes place. The game, which pits the Miami Dolphins against the New York Jets, will air on Amazon Prime Video.
And, according to one popular NFL Twitter account, the fact that Amazon paid a bunch of money for the game could have everything to do with shopping and little to do with football.
Joe Pompliano spoke about this at length in a long form tweet. Here are some relevant excerpts.
“Cost Of A 30-Second Commercial
• Thursday Night Football: $440,000
• Black Friday: $880,000
But more importantly, Amazon will leverage its new ad strategy called “audience-based creative.”
This will enable brands to target different audience segments with different ads in the same time slot.
For example, according to Ad Age, Bose will show three different ads using Amazon’s ad technology.
The first ad features Joe Burrow and will be delivered to non-Prime members, while the other two Bose ads will feature different products and be shown only to Prime members based on their Amazon Prime search history.
And here’s the best part…
These targeted ads will also be shoppable, meaning viewers can watch the commercial, place the product in their cart with the click of a button, and checkout without ever leaving the broadcast.
That makes Amazon’s broadcast far more valuable than a typical commercial — brands will be able to retarget these customers after the game — and it also gives us a view into how brand advertising could look in the future.”
So, is Amazon spending $100 million this year to air the game to keep people out of stores and on their couches, where they browse Amazon and even shop products directly on their TV screen while they watch the game? That’s what it seems like, and that seems to be incredibly smart business.