The news: Prime Video quietly introduced real-time, show-level ad reporting, making it the first streaming service to offer the feature, per Adweek.

• The feature is primarily an insight tool, providing show-level reporting detailing CPMs, impressions, and content adjacency by content rating, title, and genre—data that has typically been unavailable to marketers. It also provides insights into delivery metrics and can help validate that specific genre-based ad buys are working as intended.
• Advertisers can use the feature to exclude up to five of about 28 total genres or six content categories from campaigns—though they cannot specify titles they want to appear near or exclude distinct shows. Agencies like PMG have used the feature to avoid running ads alongside mature or unrated content.
• The tool applies to content on Prime Video and Freevee. It is not available for third-party apps available on Fire TV.

Zooming out: The tool follows several other Prime Video ad product releases—highlighting Amazon’s commitment to making Prime Video the go-to connected TV (CTV) platform for advertisers.

• In May, Amazon debuted three new CTV ad formats for Prime Video that expanded control of pause ad placement, introduced shopping features for users, and allowed viewers to send products on screen to their phones.
• Prime Video is planning to expand its contextual targeting capabilities, per Adweek, which would massively increase the granularity and amount of contextual audience segments available to advertisers.
• Amazon also plans to increase Prime Video ad loads to boost its advertising appeal—and in turn, increase revenues.

Our take: Prime Video’s new ad tool positions it as a testing ground for streaming advertising’s evolution, where content transparency becomes as valuable as audience data—enabling Amazon to justify premium CPMs by giving advertisers an idea of what their investment is getting them.

Amazon is betting that streaming’s future lies not in replicating traditional TV’s broad reach, but in offering the precision and accountability that traditional media cannot match. By addressing the streaming industry’s transparency problem, Amazon positions itself to capture traditional TV budgets from advertisers who may have been more hesitant to migrate to digital.