What sets Amazon apart as an advertising platform has always been its data: the closed ecosystem of purchase intent, browsing behaviour, and commerce signals that no other player in the market can fully replicate. Two announcements in May 2026 made that advantage materially stronger, and they did it in opposite directions simultaneously.
One move sends Amazon’s data out into inventory it does not own. The other brings an entirely new audience type in from outside. Together they make amazons CTV proposition the most addressable it’s ever been.
Data Going out: Amazon Audiences on Netflix
On 13 April, Amazon launched the ability to apply Amazon Audiences to Netflix inventory in the US. EMEA followed on 18 May, making this live for UK advertisers now.
Amazon Audiences draws on shopping behaviour, browsing patterns, and streaming signals from across the Amazon ecosystem. Amazon puts the scale at trillions of data points, with identity matching it says covers 90% of US households. Buyers can reach Netflix viewers based on what they have purchased, browsed, and shown commercial intent around, on inventory that sits entirely outside Amazon’s owned properties. These signals were not available on third-party CTV inventory twelve months ago.
Netflix is not just any CTV inventory. It is high-attention, premium-environment, large-screen viewing at genuine scale, and it was previously unreachable with Amazon’s commerce data layer. The ability to find a consumer actively shopping for running shoes on Amazon and then reach them on Netflix using the same intent signals is a meaningful extension of what the DSP can do.
Targeting is interesting. Measurement is what changes the argument.
Amazon DSP has always had a structural advantage in attribution. When a brand uses Amazon’s commerce data to reach someone actively browsing or buying in a relevant category, and that person subsequently purchases on Amazon, the full journey is traceable: signal, exposure, purchase, all in one ecosystem. Directly purchasing through the television is new, and still scaling – and the future state and scale of this is currently unknown. The loop is longer, the path less direct. But Amazon Marketing Cloud connects CTV impressions to in-Amazon retail outcomes: product page views, add-to-cart events, purchases.
For Netflix, that closed loop is not yet available. Impression-level data from Netflix does not currently flow into AMC, but we believe it is on the roadmap, which would mean the closed loop that previously existed only within Amazon’s owned inventory could extend to Netflix.
That is worth being clear about when scoping a Netflix buy. The targeting argument, applying Amazon’s commerce data to reach the right person on a premium streaming platform, stands on its own. The closed-loop measurement argument does not extend there at the moment – but it is all very exciting.
Data coming in: LinkedIn on Amazon DSP
On 7 May, Amazon DSP announced it had connected LinkedIn’s professional data to its CTV buying stack. Advertisers can now target against LinkedIn’s one billion-plus member base using signals like role, seniority level, and sector, attributes that have had no viable route into streaming inventory until now. Currently live in the US only, with no confirmed UK launch date.
This is a different kind of move. The Netflix announcement extends Amazon’s data outward into new inventory. The LinkedIn integration brings an audience type into Amazon’s ecosystem that was not there before.
Senior B2B professionals have historically been one of the hardest audiences to reach programmatically at scale, particularly in premium environments. LinkedIn has the identity data. And until now limited, credible routes into high-scale, high-quality CTV. Amazon DSP is that route. For B2B advertisers, this is professional identity targeting on the big screen, in high-attention viewing environments, without relying on rough job-function proxies built from third-party signals. When this capability reaches the UK, it opens a channel category that has not meaningfully existed for B2B buyers before.
Where the Argument has limits
For brands that do not sell on Amazon, the measurement case is slightly weaker. The closed loop depends on Amazon purchase data. Without it, you are back to third-party attribution, or ad-tags, conversion APIs and clean room integrations – which are useful but not the same capability. Worth scoping this carefully against your specific category and sales environment before treating AMC measurement as the primary rationale for the buy.
This applies to Netflix too. The attribution story for Netflix inventory sits outside the AMC loop for now. The case for buying it rests on the targeting precision and the quality of the environment, not on closed-loop measurement back to Amazon outcomes – a very compelling case nonetheless.
The LinkedIn layer, when it arrives in the UK, will extend the argument further for advertisers who do not rely on Amazon for sales. Professional identity targeting on premium streaming inventory has historically been unavailable at meaningful scale, and CTV often skews to becoming a largely B2C channel by default. That changes when LinkedIn’s data reaches UK audiences through Amazon DSP, particularly for advertisers trying to reach senior decision-makers at scale.
What this means together
Amazon’s data play, already the most compelling differentiator in its advertising stack, just got stronger in two directions at once.
The Netflix announcement extends Amazon’s most powerful targeting data into the most premium CTV environment it has ever reached. Broad awareness campaigns, built on genuine commerce intent, running in high-attention environments. The LinkedIn announcement makes CTV targetable against audiences it could not previously reach at scale. A whole new buyer type gaining access to premium streaming inventory with genuine precision.
UK streaming reached 38% of total TV-set viewing in 2025 per BARB, while live TV sits at 45% but the gap is narrowing fast, particularly among 16-34s. US programmatic CTV is already a $37 billion market growing 14% year on year per eMarketer; IAB UK puts the UK market at £2.31 billion in 2026, up 15%. This is not a channel in transition. It is a channel that has arrived, and Amazon just gave its buyers the most advanced tools for navigating it.
What we’re watching
We have been running Amazon Audiences on Netflix inventory since the EMEA launch, and the early scale results are encouraging. The next stage is stress-testing the AMC measurement loop in practice: connecting Netflix impressions to in-Amazon purchase outcomes and validating that the data matches the promise. We will share what we find.
The LinkedIn layer, when it confirms a UK launch date, will be worth moving on quickly. The window before this becomes standard practice is probably short.
Bottom line
The question for 2026 is not whether to buy CTV. Most brands already have a position on that. The harder question is what audience infrastructure sits beneath your buy, and whether it connects to outcomes or just approximates them.
