Dive Brief:

• Amazon Ads and Roku have partnered to provide advertisers with what they are claiming is the largest authenticated connected TV (CTV) footprint in the U.S., according to a press release.
• The companies together reach an estimated 80 million U.S. CTV households, or more than 80% of the market, per ComScore data. Through collaboration, they aim to improve addressability across top streaming apps on Roku and Amazon Fire TV operating systems, including those owned by Disney, Fox, Paramount and Warner Bros.
• Early tests of the integration, which is run through Amazon’s demand-side platform (DSP), helped advertisers reach 40% more unique viewers without altering their budgets while reducing ad redundancy by 30%. The tie-up comes as CTV continues an ascent that is expected to eventually topple linear TV ad spending.  

Dive Insight:

Amazon and Roku are uniting to give brands what they position as unmatched CTV scale in the U.S. The partnership between two companies that have long been rivals in the hardware arena focuses on Amazon’s DSP, which is leveraging a custom identity resolution tool to identify logged-in viewers across Roku’s operating system and devices. 

The goal is to deliver superior targeting and measurement while cutting down on the amount of times an individual is exposed to the same ads, a persistent headache in a CTV landscape that is highly fragmented. Since advertisers will now be able to track consumers across Roku and Amazon more seamlessly, they can potentially eliminate such waste and create a better overall viewing experience.

The authenticated reach now available across both platforms will be supported by Amazon’s troves of shopping, browsing and viewership data, which has propelled its ads business to become the third-largest in digital behind Google and Meta. Tying up with Roku also puts another feather in the cap of Amazon DSP, which is vying to become a bigger ad-tech player beyond the e-commerce giant’s roots in retail media. Roku additionally works with DSPs like The Trade Desk, Yahoo and Google.

“The collaboration enables agencies and brands that use Amazon DSP to benefit from greater efficiency and higher performance,” said Paul Kotas, senior vice president of Amazon Ads, in a statement. “By combining our technologies, advertisers can now drive full-funnel campaign outcomes — from awareness through conversion — while eliminating media waste across Amazon and Roku streaming audiences.”

U.S. CTV ad spending is expected by eMarketer to grow 16.8% in 2025 to hit $33.48 billion. Roku leads the CTV device market in the U.S. with 38% market share, followed by Amazon Fire TV at 18%, per recent research from Pixalate.

Beyond the hardware picture, streaming continues to rise as consumers’ preferred method of tuning in. The category in May outpaced the combined share of broadcast and cable viewing for the first time, Nielsen said this week. Streaming represented 44.8% of TV watching last month, a new market share high, while broadcast and cable made up 20.1% and 24.1%, respectively.