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 every 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. When this functionality becomes available across Netflix and other 3P CTV inventory too (which we believe is in the roadmap) the closed loop that previously existed only within Amazon’s owned inventory will extend to Netflix.
For brands selling on Amazon, that changes how you think about CTV investment. Not just a reach vehicle with fuzzy attribution, but a traceable step in a measurable journey. You can understand what a Netflix impression actually contributed to downstream purchase, not approximately and not through modelled attribution, but through matched identity data. That is a materially different conversation to have about CTV budget.
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. Until now it had no credible route 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 weaker. The closed loop depends on Amazon purchase data. Without it, you are back to third-party attribution, 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.
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 makes CTV measurable in a way it has never been for Amazon buyers. Broad awareness campaigns that close the loop back to in-Amazon sales. 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.
