With brief, occasional, italicized and sometimes gratuitous commentary…
• Advertising Age reports that Amazon is trying to build a Super Bowl-like aura around its Black Friday football game this week, the first time the NFL has had a game on the day after Thanksgiving.
According to the story, "Amazon has generated significant excitement among advertisers for its upcoming Black Friday game, with some media buyers comparing it to a mini Super Bowl. Some brands are even treating it like the Big Game by running new creative specifically produced for the game. Bose, Hasbro, State Farm and DraftKings all have campaigns that will debut during the Black Friday game."
Ad Age writes that "in Amazon’s second year holding exclusive rights to 'Thursday Night Football' on Prime Video, the e-commerce event that the company devised is an effort to transform its NFL access into an advertising and sales channel for Black Friday (Amazon does not stream Thursday games on Thanksgiving, because those annual matchups go to TV networks). The tech company was able to bring in non-traditional football sponsors, such as Hasbro, to jump-start holiday shopping in the Friday football game."
It is probably not great luck that the 4-6 New York Jets are in the Black Friday game, playing against the 7-3 Miami Dolphins - the odds on this being a really competitive game are not high. (The odds aren't even good that the Jets will show up with an offensive line.)
The secret sauce that Amazon brings to this enterprise is the ability to target ads to customers - because it is able to "connect its vast shopper data to NFL-style advertising," it is able to show different ads to different viewers, based on shopper behavior. In some ways, it is just at the beginning of this process, but the possibilities seem almost endless. (Maybe Amazon could identify candidates for an improved Jets offensive line.)
