Deals are a big deal 👀

If you've bought premium TV inventory (like Prime Video ads) on the Amazon DSP, you know that PMP and PG deals must be part of your media plan 📺🤔

In this month's edition of Cherry Picked, we break down what the expansion of 3P supply means for the Amazon DSP, the benefits and limitations of PMP vs PG deals, and the ways we curate premium TV inventory in the Gigi app to make buying TV easier than ever before.

Let’s dive in 👇

Amazon’s ad tech has transformed from a direct single sales channel with owned and operated inventory into a sophisticated, full-funnel advertising solution for most of a brand’s media buying — notably Streaming TV. This evolution presents an unprecedented opportunity for marketers of brands endemic to Amazon and is comprised of two critical components:

AMC and AWS Clean Rooms' data collaboration capabilities now allow marketers to securely combine their own 1P transaction signals with Amazon transaction signals. For many brands, combining these two channels will represent a greater percentage of their total sales than any single retailer or any combination of channels (since retailers do not collaborate with each other). This results in a comprehensive, unified commerce identity offering an unparalleled signal for audience enrichment and deterministic measurement.

Perhaps even more compelling is what’s happening on the supply side. Amazon’s DSP has historically been considered a tool for running display and video ads within the Amazon ecosystem and third-party publishers for display ads via Amazon’s Publisher Network (APN). But, as Amazon has set its sights on TV advertising dominance, it has done a remarkable job of building out supply-side technology (through Amazon Publisher Cloud and its partnership with Magnite, as examples) and a supply desk team to provide marketers with access to top-tier TV inventory across major publishers like Disney, Paramount, and Max.

This expansion of TV supply is the most significant opportunity in Amazon’s ad tech, which no one is talking about, and it’s critical to understand its ramifications. Few people realize that one can build audiences and deterministically measure outcomes of TV campaigns in exactly the same way they can on 3P inventory (like Disney) as they can on Amazon-owned and operated inventory (like Prime Video). Even better, marketers can “double dip” in their upfront commitments. For instance, if a brand has committed to spending $100 on TV in the Amazon DSP and another $100 with Disney, buying Disney inventory with the Amazon DSP allows the marketer to meet both spending commitments simultaneously.

So, on the data side (for many endemic brands), if one were to collaborate their 1P signals with Amazon, the combined signals are, by definition, greater than any other potential channel. And, on the supply side, since the Amazon DSP is the only place to buy its own inventory, and the Amazon DSP provides marketers with as much 3P supply as any other DSP, it also has access to the most diverse set of premium TV inventory. This raises an important question: why should marketers continue buying on any other DSP?

Consolidating media buys into a single platform provides two key advantages. First, deduplicated identity minimizes audience overlap, reducing wasted impressions and improving efficiency by reaching each consumer only once across multiple placements. Second, enhanced scale for measurement. The more impressions and reach a campaign generates within Amazon’s ecosystem, the greater the opportunity for Amazon’s ad tech to measure meaningful business outcomes.

The case for shifting budgets away from other DSPs like DV360 and The Trade Desk to Amazon has never been stronger. Amazon has an unfair advantage compared to their competitors: they have a demonstrably stronger signal and a more diverse and exclusive supply. The challenge for Amazon is to unify brand and e-commerce teams - and the budgets they manage. These are ‘people’ problems, and they will take time. But once achieved, for many brands, the opportunity for Amazon’s TV advertising dominance will be unmatched.

Not all Streaming TV inventory is created equal—premium TV inventory matters.

Navigating supply sources, deal structures, and the cost considerations of premium Streaming TV inventory requires strategic expertise. In this webinar, we break down the essentials of Amazon Ads Streaming TV inventory. We look at the expansion of Amazon’s supply-side ad tech and diversification of premium TV supply, how Amazon is centralizing media buying, and understanding when to use programmatic guaranteed vs. private marketplace deals.

Join host Adam Epstein, Co-Founder and CEO at Gigi with guest speakers Jordan Kreisner, Sr. Business Development Manager Supply Desk North America at Amazon Ads, Benjamin LeMaster, Director of Programmatic at Code3, and Gloria Steiner, Head of Product at Gigi, as they dive into how to secure premium TV inventory that drives maximum results, and avoid wasting spend on low-quality placements.

🔹 Inventory 101 – How to select the right inventory for your strategy, balance high-CPM inventory with audience targeting, and curate high-performing deals.

🔹 Understand inventory supply sources – Learn about the Amazon DSP's supply sources, including Prime Video, Amazon Publisher Direct, and premium third-party inventory like Disney, Max, and more.

🔹 The art of deal selection – Uncover the differences between programmatic guaranteed (PG) and private marketplace (PMP) deals and how to leverage them for maximum impact.

🔹 Winning with sports inventory – With Amazon’s increased investment in sports rights, discover how brands can tap into live sports content for their campaigns.

Selecting the right inventory for your STV strategy is critical to maximizing the impact of your campaigns. However, many marketers fail to execute this correctly. Without using private marketplace deals (PMP) and programmatic guaranteed (PG) deals to curate inventory, campaigns may deliver across unwanted publishers and lead to misaligned campaign objectives.

First, a quick primer on deals:

PMP deals function as invite-only auctions where select buyers can access high-quality inventory at set rates. For example, many people who have specifically targeted Prime Video inventory for their TV campaigns have done so with PMP deals. PG deals, on the other hand, guarantee specific inventory and pricing upfront.

Deals dominate the way premium TV inventory is bought and sold. According to The Trade Desk’s CEO, over 75% of CTV inventory is transacted on non-biddable inventory (i.e. deals) rather than in an open auction. That means the most valuable placements aren’t necessarily available through standard programmatic buying; they require navigating a complex PMP and PG deals network.

Strategically, these deals exist because premium publishers want to maintain control over their inventory, ensuring their most valuable ad slots are sold at predictable prices while benefiting from automation. For marketers, PMP and PG deals offer greater brand safety, transparency, and premium placement—a critical factor in high-stakes environments like TV, where open-market bidding can lead to inconsistent quality and lack of control over where ads appear.

How should you know which type of deal is right for your TV strategy?

It depends on what you value as part of your media plan. PMP deals are ideal for brands that want to execute sophisticated audience strategies while targeting specific inventory. As an example, if you run a TV campaign on Prime Video and build an AMC lookalike audience based off of your 1P data and Amazon data of your highest spending customers while negating past purchasers and past product viewers on Amazon and 1P signals, then PMP deals are an ideal fit. The risk, however, is that PMP deals do not guarantee delivery. If inventory is limited or demand is higher than the supply, this may impact spend, and marketers will have to adjust inventory strategies accordingly throughout the campaign. This was a particularly acute issue for Prime Video inventory in Q4.

PG deals, on the other hand, guarantee inventory and delivery. While this can be beneficial, there are tradeoffs. With PG deals, you’re limited in your audience-building strategies. You cannot layer exclusion audiences (like past purchasers on PG deals) or add AMC audiences onto PG deals (which means you cannot collaborate 1P data for audiences on PG deals). You’re also locked into your price and budget commitments; if you choose a PG deal, you cannot change the deal mid flight. Amazon provides incentives for selecting PG deals, namely they reduce the DSP platform fee (typically 7%-10%) to only 1% on PG deals.

We’ve broken down everything you need to know about PMP and PG deals within the Amazon DSP in the table below:

What do we recommend?

PMP deals. Aside from inventory and delivery risk during peak periods, PMP deals are by far the most advantageous way to buy TV inventory in the Amaozn DSP. PMP deals are: often cheaper (on a CPM basis), offer better audience building tactics, are self serve, and offer greater flexibility.

The question isn’t “if” you should be using PMP deals, the question is “which ones”. The Amazon DSP offers an expansive selection of PMP deals, organized in a cumbersome text-only list of 4,000 options. It can be a challenge to understand which PMP deal to select as part of your media strategy. This lack of clarity and accessibility in deal selection has been a limiting factor—until now.

At Gigi, we’re solving this problem by curating the best PMP deals across both Amazon’s and third-party publishers’ premium TV inventory, making it easier than ever for marketers to tap into Amazon DSP’s STV capabilities without the frustration of sifting through thousands of deals. We thought it was essential to highlight premium 3P inventory like Disney and Paramount so our customers were abundantly aware of the newfound opportunities presented by the Amazon DSP and took advantage of these opportunities by diversifying supply and consolidating their brand budgets into Amazon’s ad environment.

Agencies are also able to bring in their own deals into Gigi (as they can in the Amazon DSP), and we’ll surface those front and centre in a “your deals” section (we can even add an agency logo, if you’d like).

We believe that deals are foundational to a sophisticated TV media buying strategy at Gigi, and want to ensure that our customers are leveraging the breadth of deals available within the Amazon DSP.

Thanks for reading Cherry Picked, and we’ll see you next month!