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Amazon’s Prime Video officially wrapped its second year as the exclusive streaming home for Thursday Night Football, finishing a year of growth in both viewership and advertising.
The 2023 season averaged 11.86 million viewers per game, up 24% year over year, according to data from Nielsen. Overall, the NFL had its best regular season average viewership for games since 2015, with regular-season games averaging 17.9 million viewers.
More than 50% of Prime Video’s 2023 TNF advertisers were net-new versus the 2022 season, and around 20% of those advertisers were new to the NFL.
“There are brands that were already invested with Amazon and using different tactics and now all of a sudden you add this amazing property like Thursday Night Football into the Prime Video mix,” Amy McDevitt, Amazon Ads’ sports brand partnership lead, told Adweek. “Now you see brands that were traditionally doing streaming TV or online video with Amazon suddenly extending themselves into the NFL, which is something that we’re incredibly proud of.”
According to Amazon data shared with Adweek, TNF ads delivered a 70% higher search rate on Google than broadcast and cable prime networks and a 59% higher search rate than NFL linear networks.
Meanwhile, the strongest categories included traditional NFL staples like automotive and insurance, but there was also strength in CPG and grocery.
“That probably has something to do with those brands being endemic and having that previous Amazon Ads experience and looking to extend that into this big moment with TNF every week,” said McDevitt.
Breaking the huddle with new audiences
This year, Prime Video broadcast the first Black Friday NFL game, which successfully sold out its advertising inventory early.
The game, which aired at 3 p.m. ET, averaged 9.61 million viewers, which is below the TNF average. However, the matchup between the Jets and the Dolphins brought in new audiences for TNF and Prime Video.
According to Nielsen, 24% of viewers were watching TNF for the first time this season, and 31% of the Black Friday audience did not watch any of the other three NFL Thanksgiving games.
Prime Video experimented with shoppable during the game, and the company said that total engagement with interactive ads was more than 250% higher than the average game week across both Interactive Video Ads (IVA) and QR codes.
