Amazon connects more of Australia's media ecosystem at second upfront

Amazon Ads is widening its reach across Australia's advertising market, adding Netflix, the country's major commercial audio players and a new layer of agentic AI as the technology giant builds out an increasingly broad media and adtech proposition.

Unveiled at Amazon's second Australian upfront, the expansion follows a year in which the company has pushed beyond its traditional commerce heartland, connecting its vast pool of shopping, browsing and entertainment signals with a growing network of media partners.

Prime Video's average monthly ad-supported reach in Australia has also climbed to more than 5.5 million viewers, up 10% year-on-year, as Amazon continues to build its own entertainment offering alongside its push into the wider media ecosystem.

Jessica Roach, head of sales, non-endemic at Amazon Ads, said the company was building on the full-funnel proposition it took to market at its inaugural Australian upfront last year.

“We're proud of the momentum we've made in the last 12 months,” Roach told MARKETING-INTERACTIVE.

“For us, it's really about continuing to deepen that promise. I think it's the right territory for us and it's delivering the right outcomes as well.”

Among the biggest moves is the expansion of Amazon DSP.

Advertisers will now be able to access audio inventory spanning SCA, ARN and Nova Entertainment alongside Spotify, bringing radio, podcasts and streaming audio together through the platform.

Amazon Audiences is also being extended to Netflix in Australia, allowing advertisers to use Amazon's shopping, browsing and streaming signals to build audiences across Netflix inventory.

Roach said the growing network of publisher integrations was designed to give advertisers greater choice across an increasingly fragmented media landscape.

“The Amazon DSP now has such a broad range of publisher partnerships,” she said.

“Whether you're running CTV strategies, whether you're running audio strategies, whether you're running display strategies, it is available through the Amazon DSP.

“I think the really unique piece for us is then being able to leverage those unique Amazon signals within that programmatic environment as well.”

From signals to agents

Amazon is also putting agentic AI more firmly into the advertising workflow.

Ads Agent combines Amazon's first-party insights with agentic AI, allowing self-service DSP advertisers to build, optimise and analyse campaigns through natural language.

Alongside it, Amazon Ads MCP Server is launching in Australia in open beta, allowing advertisers, agencies and technology partners to connect external AI tools directly into Amazon's advertising systems for campaign creation, reporting and account management.

Roach said that interoperability means customers can use AI tools they already work with, including Claude or ChatGPT, alongside Amazon DSP.

It marks a notable evolution from Amazon's pitch at its first Australian upfront, when much of the proposition centred on the trillions of shopping, browsing and streaming signals sitting across its ecosystem.

A year later, those signals are increasingly being put to work across media Amazon does not itself own, while AI is beginning to determine how advertisers access and act on them.

Prime Video gets more personal

Amazon is simultaneously adding more advertising capability to Prime Video.

New Location-Based Interactive Video Ads will allow national advertisers to vary creative by geography, including regional offers, prices and local information, with interactive functions including “Send to Phone” and “Sign Up Today”.

Dynamic TV Creative goes further, using Amazon's shopping behaviour data and AI to automatically change product imagery, calls-to-action, headlines and product information for individual audiences.

Rather than producing multiple versions of an ad, brands provide a single creative asset from which Amazon generates the variations automatically. The format will become available to Australian brands selling through Amazon in early 2027.

Amazon is also introducing Next Up Ads, giving a single advertiser the space between episodes to continue a brand message across a viewing session.

The company pointed to L'Oréal Paris' sponsorship of Elle as evidence of how it sees entertainment and commerce increasingly coming together. The campaign combined in-program product integration with shoppable Prime Video advertising, reaching one million unique Australian viewers, recording a video completion rate approaching 95% and generating more than 5,000 branded searches.

Georgia Hack, CMO at L'Oréal ANZ, said the partnership allowed the brand to extend the campaign beyond the content itself.

“L'Oréal Paris exists to empower women through beauty, and Elle was the perfect stage for that,” Hack said.

“Amazon Ads let us go beyond the screen, turning cultural moments into commerce and making it easy for viewers to discover and shop the products that inspired them.”

Beyond the Amazon store

Roach said one of the biggest changes over the past year had been adoption among brands that don't primarily sell products through Amazon.

She pointed to CommBank as an example of how the company is taking its commerce and entertainment signals into new categories.

Amazon Ads and AWS developed a predictive audience model for a CommBank credit card campaign using signals spanning shopping, browsing and content consumption.

The audiences were then activated across Prime Video, interactive video, display and online video, with CommBank also creating a destination within Amazon.com.au for customers to learn about its credit card products.

Roach said the campaign produced a 14.9% lift in brand consideration, a 13.5% increase in ad recall and a 15% increase in customers adding a CommBank credit card to their Amazon payment portfolio.

Roach said the work demonstrated that Amazon's advertising ambitions now extend well beyond brands selling through its marketplace.

Prime Video will provide another part of that equation. Amazon revealed 34 Australian Originals have now been produced since 2019, with The Test returning for a fourth season alongside global titles including Fourth Wing and Tomb Raider.

The service will also carry all four ICC Cricket events in 2027 and continues its NBA coverage from October through June.

For Amazon, the pieces are increasingly coming together: entertainment it owns, media it doesn't, commerce signals, an expanding DSP and now AI agents sitting across the top.

As Willie Pang, managing director of Amazon Ads, put it, the ambition is to give advertisers access to audiences across Amazon and the open internet, with campaigns “planned, bought and measured from one place”.

"Last year we made a promise to Australian advertisers: full-funnel advertising, for everyone. Today we're continuing to deliver on that promise, with deeper partnerships alongside the premium publishers Australians love, new interactive and personalised ad formats on Prime Video, and AI-powered innovation that puts advertisers in control," Pang said.

"Whether a brand sells on Amazon or not, they can now reach audiences across Amazon and the open internet — with the complexity stripped away and everything planned, bought, and measured from one place."