Amazon’s impact on the streaming ad market has opened CTV door to small business advertisers
The cost of ad space on streaming platforms has been dragged down in the last year, as early movers Netflix and Disney+ raced to keep up with Amazon’s aggressive pricing.
Now, the cost-per-thousand viewers (CPM) across those three streamers hovers between $38 to $40 (down from Netflix’s 2022 price of $60), low enough that small to medium business (SMB) advertisers can begin to consider them a viable alternative to local cable or regional linear TV.
Consider the example of Naturepedic, a premium mattress and sleepwear brand based in Cleveland, Ohio.
Chief Growth Officer Arin Schultz told Digiday he had “little faith” in CTV prior to a campaign the brand ran in the latter half of 2024, targeting consumers in Los Angeles, New York and Chicago. (He didn’t give exact performance metrics of this campaign). But the ads, booked through ad buying platform MNTN, performed “very well” in driving customers into its stores on a media budget of just under $500,000.
A shorter follow-up campaign starring former NFL quarterback Bernie Kosar, for which the brand has earmarked up to $10,000, is set to run on a similar spread of CTV ads on channels like HGTV and the Food Network.
Schultz told Digiday he expected Naturepedic to include Amazon Prime Video in that spread, in a further campaign penciled for later this year.
Naturepedic’s embrace of CTV mirrors a path taken by small and medium business brands toward streaming ads. “Streaming prices in general, not just at Amazon, have lowered enough that smaller advertisers are more comfortable with it,” said Ross Benes, a senior analyst at eMarketer.
SMBs on TV
Drawn by lower costs and the chance to pursue target audiences more precisely than on linear, SMB clients are shifting spend from linear TV into CTV. In some cases they’re trying out TV advertising for the first time via streaming.
