Amazon hammers full funnnel future in first upfront

Amazon has emphasised its new Netflix ad deal and deepening sports offering in a debut upfront event that hammered the “full funnel” message and signalled the digital and shopping behemoth’s serious intent in Australia.

The upfront, held at Sydney’s Hordern Pavilion, was mercifully brief compared to some others – Foxtel comes to mind – and was considered by agency observers strong around the “Complete TV” solution that facilitates planning, buying and tracking video advertising across a range of platforms, including Netflix.

Amazon Australia country manager Willie Pang singled out Complete TV as the announcement he was most excited about.

“Complete TV will do what it says on the tin,” Pang said, describing it as “a new suite of tools that help you optimize all of your streaming TV, digital TV investments across Prime Video and the premium video partners and broadcasters that I mentioned before.”

Those partners were displayed behind Pang on stage at one point: Foxtel Go, Fox Sports, Binge, Paramount, Paramount+, SBS On Demand, 10, Kayo Sports, Samsung Ads, and the new one, Netflix.

 ”We’re building Amazon DSP to become your one stop media buying shop,” Pang said, having reminded the audience that “the future is now”.

Nina Oyama being charmingly humble

The afternoon was MCed by comedian and actor Nina Oyama. Oyama, who acts in Prime’s dark comedy Deadloch series, began the show with a bit about “full funnel” before charmingly admitting she had no idea what that meant.

Oyama’s vibe fit well with Pang’s positioning of Amazon as “humble and hardworking”, a differentiation that seemed aimed at the other platforms giants. Youtube/Google had occupied the same stage exactly two weeks before.

In terms of announcements, not a great deal of what was discussed was new. Amazon had flagged the Netflix deal – which is global – two weeks before. A new season of Deadloch with Luke Hemsworth, the AFL documentary series made by the creators of Drive To Survive, the sports rights (ICC cricket, NBA basketball), and the fact that the Women’s Cricket World Cup will be free to watch: all these things were prefigured. 

As Tim Burrowes has pointed out in Unmade, it was the fact of the event itself that was the main news event. It is the first Australian event Amazon has styled an “upfront”, and that is significant as a statement of intent.

UM head of media planning Michael Mellington told Mumbrella that as a Melburnian he was excited by the AFL documentary, but the new video tools were more significant.

“I think they definitely landed that they’re a full funnel ecosystem. That was drilled into us pretty hard,” Mellington said.

“In reality there are a few partners that can actually deliver on that. Being able to have that kind of content play, connection to culture and all of those memorable moments through their premier content suite. And then linking that through to commerce is, is quite unique. I think it’s pretty exciting.”

Kate Westgate and Maria Gudino, both from Unilever, explained how Amazon had helped their laundry liquid brand

Mellington had picked up on the “humble” positioning”.

“It was interesting at the start, they said ‘we hope that you see us as a humble brand’. I think the tone was: there was a lot of content and there was a lot of good smarts in there, but they came across really fun … [Nina Oyama] was brilliant.

“I think aggregating the screens is important. Understanding true incremental reach is important.

“The skeptic in me wants to unpack it a little bit as well. Like I want to know how it’s done and where the true incrementality comes from.

“I think that will be important, but — having more to play with is better than less.”