Amazon Ads and Roku have reached an agreement on new initiative that will vastly increase the ad space available to media buyers, as reported by Deadline Sunday evening. The news comes amidst this year’s Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity (formerly known as the International Advertising Festival), an annual event that celebrates innovation and exceptionalism within the creative communications sphere.
According to Deadline, the new initiative will integrate a system its developers have described as a “custom identity resolution service.” When the new software launches, users of the Roku and Fire TV operating systems will be able to sign into their Amazon accounts — making it easier for the tech industry titan’s demand-side platform (or DSP) to target products at specific individuals.
The companies reported strong results from trials of the new technologies, also first reported via Deadline. Ads received 40 percent more unique viewers with the new system than without it, while maintaining an identical cost for media buyers. The updated software also diminished the number of redundant ads shown to a given user by 30 percent, which in combination with the increased viewership, effectively triples the system’s overall efficiency.
Kelly MacLean, Vice President of Amazon DSP, and Jay Askinazi, Roku’s Head of Global Media Revenue and Growth, commented on the partnership in a joint interview with Deadline that accompanied the announcement. Despite the historic rivalry between the companies over streaming dominance, Askinasi said there was no conflict of interest in the decision, since both companies are “trying to solve marketers’ challenges” and that “there was a strong relationship there to begin with” between the two. MacLean added that she believed the agreement presented a “new canvas” for advertising integration, and that both Amazon and Roku were “customer-obsessed” companies “trying to solve these CTV industry challenges.”
The new system is expected to take effect sometime in Q4 of 2025. The 2025 Cannes Lion International Festival of Creativity runs through this Friday, June 20th.