Audiences are moving from linear TV to ad-supported streaming, and the move leaves brands with a central challenge: turning temporary campaign impressions into a lasting cultural presence.

Chris Fuller, director of financial and consumer services at Amazon Ads, moderated a panel at Advertising Week New York on brand-building through premium content, which featured insights from Jodie Hayes, vice president of integrated investments at Havas Media, and Lauren Anderson, director of the US brand innovation lab at Amazon Ads.

Prioritizing attention over reach

Judging premium content investments by impression volume and basic frequency is no longer enough. Reach remains foundational, but media planners now need to focus on consumer attention and active engagement.

Highlighting an Amazon Ads research study across 200,000 respondents, Fuller said that "cumulative attention is 8X more predictable of a positive brand outcome than frequency alone." Driving favorability and purchase intent requires appearing alongside content where viewers are actively engaged.

Speaking from the agency side, Hayes said engagement has to carry reach: "Reach is important, but we have to pull that off by more engagement... Not all impressions are created equal, and we know that we need to dig into the content along with how they (the audience) are engaging with that content."

Instead of treating streaming TV as digitized linear spots, marketers need to assess how well a content environment captures brand mindshare.

From one-off placements to the 'fandom flywheel'

Forced or intrusive ad placements alienate viewers, the panelists cautioned. Brands that want a sustained presence rather than a fleeting campaign moment need to fit naturally into the content audiences love.

Content fit matters more than scale, Anderson said: "Showing up in where you should, and in a place that the customer will respond to in a real way, is more important than just showing up next to the biggest, brightest thing."

Liquid I.V.’s 360-degree partnership with Prime Video’s series Off Campus shows the strategy at work. Instead of relying solely on commercial breaks, the brand showed up through in-character moments, arena signage, social amplification, and contextual pause ads. When a brand integrates naturally into story and culture, Anderson explained, "the fandom flywheel, as it were, just hits every part of what's next to it," turning show fans into brand advocates.

What’s changing now: Custom IP and transparent optimization

The panel highlighted two major shifts in entertainment marketing that many brands have yet to leverage:

• Bespoke Intellectual Property (IP) creation: When existing entertainment doesn't offer an organic fit, some brands build their own custom IP. Anderson detailed how Lexus launched a campaign for electric vehicles by partnering with jazz artist Laufey to write lyrics for Miles Davis’s and Bill Evans's classic composition "Blue in Green." The activation featured a live Twitch stream and an Amazon Music release.
• Transparent, granular reporting: Hayes noted that streaming buying must move away from unmeasured content bundles. Modern demand-side platforms (DSPs) let buyers track exact show-level placements and attention metrics in real time, so marketers can optimize spend across live sports, dramas, and custom activations toward long-term consideration.

Brands that succeed in premium streaming treat entertainment as more than a backdrop for ads: They place themselves strategically within the culture around a show, in ways that fit the content authentically.

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