Amazon’s Black Friday NFL Ads Will Be Coming to You Live. Maybe.
Amazon Prime Video is mostly keeping its plans for the NFL’s inaugural Black Friday game under wraps, but the company on Wednesday disclosed one new wrinkle fans can expect to see when the Dolphins and Jets suit up on Nov. 24.
Speaking at a virtual industry event, Amazon’s head of NFL sales, Danielle Carney, said the tech giant would heighten the Black Friday viewing experience by running a series of live ads that will feature its own on-air talent.
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While Carney did not specify which Thursday Night Football staffers would participate in the live ad reads, an assist from the booth would not be out of the question. (Given his celebrated predilection for sneaking in asides about the point spread during gambling’s prohibition era, play-by-play ace Al Michaels might have a lot of fun with, say, a DraftKings read.)
Also eligible for some light promotional duties are Michaels’ broadcast cohorts Kirk Herbstreit and Kaylee Hartung, but in the interest of not cluttering the live call with prompts to shop, Amazon may choose to lean on the studio crew, which includes Charissa Thompson, Tony Gonzalez, Richard Sherman and Ryan Fitzpatrick.
“We definitely want this to create somewhat of a new fan tradition, a new shopping tradition as well,” Carney said, who added that Amazon looked to impart a holiday feel to the custom reads. “We have some branded content that we’ll be building specifically around Black Friday, the game, and the deals that are happening. We’ll also create live commercials with our talent where we can curate and be really thoughtful about the deals we are showing for those who are tuning in.”
Thanks to their relative exclusivity, the talent reads will sell at a premium.
Given the scope of the event—the AFC East grudge match marks the NFL’s first official foray into what amounts to the kickoff of the holiday shopping season, during which online retailers rake in north of $9 billion in sales—Amazon may choose to fudge the “live” element. Custom spots recorded earlier in the day may approximate the look and feel of live spots without the headaches associated with verbal fumbles.
Live TV is a capricious beast, and even the Super Bowl hasn’t been entirely free of real-time marketing snafus. In a much-hyped live spot for FanDuel that aired during the third quarter of Fox’s broadcast of Super Bowl LVII, Rob Gronkowski missed a 25-yard field-goal attempt that cost users of the online platform $10 million in free bets.
In 2017, fans grumbled about a Snickers ad starring Adam Driver, which had been billed as the first live Super Bowl spot. While Driver correctly read out the halftime score before the ad began, many observers charged Snickers with staging a pre-recorded read. The spot was live; the skepticism was largely pegged to the manner in which Driver uncharacteristically flailed around during the bit like a giraffe on roller skates. Either way, the spot got people talking, which is why Mars Inc. spent $10.8 million on its 60-second window.
The Black Friday game is not baked into Amazon’s $11 billion Thursday Night Football contract, and the company is paying in the neighborhood of $75 million for the privilege of streaming the contest.
However the first Black Friday stream plays out, Amazon will keep working to reinvent the concept of “TV” advertising. “We’re going to continue to innovate, and we won’t stop because there’s so much more that we can do,” Carney said. “We have such a great voice right now and it’s just only going to get bigger.”
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