‘Thursday Night Football’ On Prime Video Rolling Out New Ad & Streaming Enhancements As Third Season Kicks Off

As it gets ready to kick off its third season of exclusive streams of Thursday Night Football, Prime Video is rolling out a number of tech-driven innovations for both advertisers and viewers.

The Buffalo Bills are taking on the Miami Dolphins in this week’s season opener. Along with the slate of 15 regular season games, Amazon‘s video platform is also going to reprise the Black Friday contest that debuted in November 2023 and also carry a wild-card playoff game next January.

Advertising has been an increasing focus across all of Prime Video, which added sponsor messages to film and series originals starting earlier this year and held a lavish upfront presentation in New York last May. Along with five presenting sponsors returning to their pregame, pre-kick, halftime, postgame, and “nightcap” positions, more than 50 new brands will be first-time TNF advertisers this season, Prime Video said. Growth categories of note have included automotive, quick-service restaurants, consumer packaged goods, retail, entertainment, financial services and hospitality.

Interactive ad formats are expanding beyond Amazon’s own Fire TV environment this season, reaching other connected-TV devices and enabling shoppable brand messages. Viewers can either add items to their Amazon shopping cart or interact with brands directly via their remote during the game.

“Live sports content continues to drive scale and at Amazon we create meaningful opportunities for brands by combining customer reach with our first party insights and innovative ad tech,” said Danielle Carney, Head of Live Sports and Video Sales for Amazon Ads. “We provide full funnel capabilities that work for all advertisers, not just brands that sell on Amazon.”

Viewers tuning in this season will see a number of AI-driven “Prime Insights” features. “Pressure Alert” tracks defenders attacking the offensive backfield during live action; “Defensive Vulnerability” uses thousands of data points to identify areas of the field where the offense should attack; and “Coverage ID” identifies the defensive scheme before the ball is snapped.

Those new features join award-winning offerings like Defensive Alerts and Prime Vision with Next Gen Stats, which have advanced the traditional viewing experience since Amazon’s exclusive NFL rights deal began in 2022.

“At Amazon, we’re uniquely positioned to accelerate the integration of AI into our live events, given the in-house expertise we’re able to collaborate with and the next-generation compute power that AWS provides.” said Jared Stacy, Director of Live Sports Production, Prime Video.  “We consistently push the teams to use AI and computer vision to deliver enhancements that will be meaningful to fans. We are excited by the progress, and the new innovations coming this season.”