Amazon and GroupM have been engaged in an exclusive partnership for the past six months to embed brands within shoppable livestreams, with work being debuted at the Cannes Lions festival this week.
Amazon launched a live shoppable free ad-supported TV (FAST) channel on Prime Video and Freevee in April, featuring rolling programming from brands, celebrities and creators.
Amazon Live content was previously only available on desktop, mobile and Fire TV, with this content streamed by more than 1 billion customers in the U.S. and India in 2023, the company said.
Viewers can purchase items featured within the livestreams by opening the Amazon Shopping app on their phone and typing “shop the show” into the search bar, which surfaces a carousel of products being shown on TV. This is enabled through account authorization and inaudible tone technology to synchronize a user’s devices to their live experience.
It was key for Amazon to offer a shoppable experience that didn’t “disrupt or cause friction within the experience,” as do offerings requiring users to scan a QR code, said Julie Haleluk, global head of growth for Amazon Shoppable Video, in an interview with Campaign US.
She said open rates for the “shop the show” experience in May surpassed Sky Media’s QR code open rate averages of 0.3% to 0.8%, based on data from 2022.
Amazon has been working with GroupM since the beginning of the year to bring brands into the live shopping content, either through sponsorship of a creator’s stream or by developing a branded stream.
For example, household cleaning brand Method sponsored an episode of Beauty Haul with Brandi Milloy, resulting in the host dedicating a section of the show to showcasing and discussing its haircare products. Virgin Voyages, a brand that does not sell on Amazon, hosted its own livestream in May from one of its cruise ships. An upcoming show with reality TV star Paige DeSorbo is set to be sponsored by Unilever’s Nexxus, with the haircare products integrated into the stream.
Brands can choose to lean on Amazon’s in-house content studio to create the branded content or work with GroupM’s entertainment group to identify a third-party production house. They own the rights to anything co-created with Amazon and GroupM and can repurpose the content for their website or social channels.
Haleluk described it as a “new type of branded content.”
“These aren’t commercials or your standard advertising — it’s about seamlessly integrating products, messaging and experiences from brands into content tailored for their target audiences,” she said.
The partnership between Amazon and GroupM was announced on stage at the Cannes Lions festival on Monday, June 17. But GroupM’s exclusive arrangement as Amazon Live’s co-creation partner is now coming to a close.
“The reason we wanted to go forward with an exclusive arrangement for a period of six months was that we do believe that this is the next frontier in the marriage of content and commerce,” said Susan Schiekofer, chief digital investment officer at GroupM.
“It allowed us to have that six-month period to bring this to our clients and to talk through various ideas — of which we have many that are coming to fruition.”
While consumer packaged goods, consumer electronics and grocery companies have been the first to test the format with GroupM, Schiekofer said “the possibilities are really endless.”