The Maze: Amazon is using U.S. American football to sell more than advertising during a game. Current advertiser interviews show its Thursday Night Football coverage helping recruit brands that do not sell on Amazon, while persuading existing marketplace brands to buy wider campaigns across streaming and shopping.
The Details:
One audience, two sales pitches. Thursday Night Football is a U.S. National Football League package on Amazon's Prime Video streaming service. Brands that do not sell through Amazon can still pay to reach its viewers. Marketing agency Tinuiti says clients have used Amazon sports to test the company's advertising capabilities before extending spending through its ad-buying software, Amazon DSP. That software lets a business purchase advertising across multiple destinations. The game can therefore be the start of a longer commercial relationship, rather than a single television-style placement. The interviews describe client behavior, without disclosing a total dollar amount.
A toothpaste campaign shows the retail connection. Colgate Total returned for the 2026 season after a 2025 campaign. Its current campaign features Detroit Lions player Amon-Ra St. Brown across its Amazon storefront, Fire TV home screen and Prime Video, including football. Colgate's marketing manager describes using Amazon data to show later retail ads to people who saw its football advertisement. The sequence is straightforward: reach someone during entertainment, then put a relevant product message in front of that audience while shopping. Amazon had already described these capabilities in February. The October development is evidence of buyers using the pitch, rather than a newly launched feature. Colgate did not disclose its Amazon Prime spending.
More advertisers does not tell us how much they spent. Amazon says the number of Thursday Night Football advertisers is up 6% so far this season. It also says live sports have brought 54 brands new to Amazon since 2022. These are different measures: one is season-to-date advertiser growth, the other a cumulative count across sports. Neither supplies advertising revenue, campaign profit or the extra sales caused by a placement. The company benefits from promoting these figures, and the report does not supply the underlying advertiser count for the 6% comparison.
MarketMaze Take: Amazon is selling access to a football audience as an entrance to a much larger advertising relationship. The useful distinction is between winning an advertiser and proving that advertiser's return. The interviews support the first proposition. Undisclosed budgets and limited performance methods leave the second open.
The wider lesson is budget convergence. For readers outside the United States, this shows how entertainment reach and retail shopping data can pull television and product-advertising budgets toward the same supplier. Tinuiti's expansion pathway and Colgate's follow-up campaign make that mechanism concrete. They do not establish identical sports availability or results in other markets.
Distribution still sets the boundary. A Horizon Media buyer warns that national football exposure can waste spending when a product is sold only in certain regions. More people seeing an ad helps little if they cannot buy the product. Amazon can connect audience reach with shopping signals; that does not remove the need to match an audience to the places a brand actually sells.
Sources: Digiday, Amazon Ads
