How to Benefit from Amazon OTT Advertising in 2026 (Your Ultimate Guide)

Amazon OTT advertising started gaining huge traction for its unique objectives. These unique objectives include enhancing brand performance initiatives and targeting a broader audience reach. And, it all started with Amazon advertising. Amazon Advertising has a great significance if you are selling products on Amazon.

The platform’s advertising tools like Sponsored Product campaigns aid the sellers immensely, by increasing your product’s visibility, which in turn increases traffic to your product listing and boosts product sales. Way back in 2018, Amazon rebranded all of its advertising services under one umbrella, called “Amazon Advertising”.

Product Display Ads, Sponsored Product Ads, and Sponsored Brands Ads now come under “Amazon Ad Console”. But there is one more branch that sellers should be aware of, which is the “Demand-Side Platform”. Previously known as the Amazon Advertising Platform, it allows advertisers to buy video ads and display ad placements, and engage the audience within as well as outside of Amazon.

So, let’s take a look at Amazon OTT advertising and the importance of OTT advertising in this age of new media in 2026.

Here’s a quick peek into the content –

What is Amazon OTT advertising?

How does Amazon OTT advertising work?

What are the advantages of OTT advertising?

New changes for Amazon OTT in 2026

Conclusion

What is Amazon OTT advertising?

Over-The-Top or OTT video services are essentially the online streaming services that we are familiar with today that don’t need a cable or service provider. OTT streaming services are currently one of the most popular forms of media consumption. So, it makes a lot of sense for advertisers to make use of the rising popularity of this platform, especially for targeting the young audience.

OTT ads can be found in places like:

Popular video streaming apps

Streaming devices

Smart TVs

Gaming consoles

Online video streaming platforms are extremely popular now, especially among the youth. It is estimated that about 60% of young adults have video streaming services as their main source of content consumption. Let’s take the example of the Amazon Fire Stick, which is one of the most used streaming devices right now, with over 40 million monthly active users. Amazon Fire Stick supports over 50 third-party apps that are ad-supported. It’s easy to imagine the potential these streaming apps have for advertising.

How do Amazon OTT advertisements work?

Amazon OTT ads work on the Amazon DSP platform. These ads will reach millions of Amazon Fire Stick users every day. The ads are non-skippable and use a full-screen format. Advertisers are able to target their audience, which is a huge advantage over traditional tv ad spots. Do note that these are not clickable ads, so the advertisement metrics cannot be measured through click-through rates or direct conversions. Rather, it’s measured through ad impressions. So, these ads are not paid per click like Sponsored Ad Campaign, it is paid per thousand impressions.

The Demand-Side Platform allows advertisers to buy video placements in ad-supported apps on Fire TV. For OTT advertisements, you can make use of Amazon DSP’s automatic advertising and audience targeting features.

What are the advantages of OTT advertising?

Now that we have seen what Amazon OTT advertising is and the way it works, let’s take a look at the advantages of using OTT advertisements.

Better targeting- Unlike traditional television ads, Amazon OTT ads allow you to target your audience more precisely. Amazon DSP will give you insights into your audience so that your ad gets engagements from the relevant audience, which creates more product sales.

Amazon DSP offers insights into your audience based on:

Product interests and shopping behaviors.

Demographics such as age, income, gender, and more.

Using Amazon OTT, you can combine the effectiveness of the visual format with the targeting features of Amazon’s Demand-Side Platform.

Ad conquesting- In Amazon OTT advertising, you can direct your product ads targeting the audience who has also viewed your competitor’s products. Currently, this feature is unique to Amazon OTT advertising. This will help you in gaining a few potential customers among the audience who are interested in your competitor’s products.

Cheaper than TV ads- Amazon OTT ads are cheaper compared to traditional television ads. Since the viewership of traditional media like TV has declined, the cost of ad spots has risen quite significantly. This makes OTT ads a much more cost-effective way of visual advertisement, as the ad spend is much more controllable. And don’t forget that OTT ads are easier to track, and is much easier to get relevant data after the campaign has ended.

Access to the audience who are difficult to reach – Amazon OTT advertisements will give you access to the audience who are not easy to reach otherwise. For example, users who have ad-blocker enabled, and the users that either have no active TV subscription or had canceled their existing subscription, are quite difficult-to-reach. By using Amazon OTT, you will have access to these audiences.

Latest changes and added features for Amazon OTT in 2026

Amazon has introduced significant innovations throughout 2025 and early 2026 that continue to enhance their streaming TV advertising capabilities. These changes create expanded opportunities for advertisers to reach engaged audiences while providing more sophisticated tools for campaign management. Let’s explore the latest developments:

Full Funnel Campaigns Tool (Launching Q1 2026)

Amazon’s Full Funnel Campaigns tool debuts in Q1 2026 as one of the company’s biggest launches. This AI-powered agentic product recommends customized campaign setups across sponsored products, sponsored brands, sponsored display, and streaming TV placements. Once launched, campaigns automatically adjust budgets, audiences, and tactics using shared data signals, while an Ads Agent answers questions using natural language.

Expanded Live Sports Inventory

Amazon is bringing even more sports opportunities in 2026, positioning itself to be “all seasons” with Amazon DSP adding inventory from the upcoming Winter Olympics and heading into its second year with NBA coverage. Following Black Friday 2025, which saw a 40% increase in advertisers across categories with the addition of NBA and golf to NFL coverage, Amazon continues expanding its live sports advertising opportunities.

Live Event Optimizer

This AI-powered programmatic offering lets advertisers access audiences during the biggest live sports moments, transforming events advertising from a complex, fragmented experience into a streamlined self-service platform. The tool automatically scales advertising when live events extend into overtime or experience audience surges.

AI-Powered Contextual Ads

Amazon introduced contextual AI pause ads at its 2025 upfront presentation, representing exponential advancement in AI capabilities throughout the year. These innovations allow for more relevant ad placements based on content context and viewer behavior.

Premium Publisher Partnerships

With Amazon establishing more partnerships with premium publishers in 2025, including Netflix and Disney, 2026 focuses on helping advertisers take advantage of these partnerships programmatically through Amazon DSP. This expansion significantly increases available inventory and audience reach.

Enhanced Audience Reach

In early 2025, Amazon Prime Video reached 205 million users globally, making it one of the most-watched streaming platforms. Amazon reports advertisers have seen a 90% increase in purchase rates since integrating Amazon streaming ads into their strategy.

Interactive Video Ads

Interactive Amazon advertising videos have expanded supply, with interactivity metrics now available in Amazon DSP, allowing advertisers to create more engaging, measurable ad experiences across streaming content.

Expanded Platform Access

Amazon OTT ads now reach audiences across Prime Video’s premium content (including exclusive series and movies), Freevee, Twitch, Fire TV ecosystem, Thursday Night Football, NBA games, and Amazon Publisher Direct partner channels like Bloomberg and Crackle.

These advancements position Amazon’s streaming TV advertising as a comprehensive, AI-driven solution for brands looking to reach the growing streaming audience in 2026 and beyond.

Check out this guide to improve Amazon Advertising Impressions.

*Note that genre blocking and audience guarantees are currently only available for advertisers who make use of Amazon managed-service advertising in the US.

Conclusion

The present and future of visual content creation and consumption belong to internet-based video streaming services.

The decline of traditional television and the increase in the user base of streaming services is a testament to this change. The good news for advertisers is that because we are at the beginning of this paradigm shift, advertising opportunities in these streaming services are relatively untouched.

That is why Amazon OTT advertising makes more sense for any brand owner who is looking to make his products and brand visible. This is the perfect time to be one among the early adopters of this largely untapped advertising platform before everyone else realizes it’s potential and starts to flock in.

Additional Read:

The Best Seller’s Guide to Amazon Prime Day

Secrets on How to sell on Amazon Prime