Amazon Prime Video wants to make Thursday nights even better this fall.

As the Indianapolis Colts face off against the Philadelphia Eagles tonight, Prime Video is officially kicking off the second year of being the exclusive home for NFL’s Thursday Night Football. After TNF’s Prime Video debut last year—which featured new branding and new ad formats—the company is looking to build on last year’s momentum and find more room for improvements.

“We really took the time to listen to our customers to hear what they wanted, and what [we could] bring to the marketplace that would be different within the NFL,” Danielle Carney, Amazon Ad’s head of NFL sales, told Marketing Brew at the Stream TV Advertising Summit on Tuesday.

The ad stuff: During this year’s upfronts, Prime Video rolled out new ad formats, like interactive ads and audience-based creative targeting that lets advertisers show different ads to different viewers. The latter in particular generated “a lot of traction and excitement” during negotiations, Carney said, and Amazon is pacing “above our expectations at this point in the ad cycle,” Jay Marine, Prime Video’s VP, global head of sports, said during a call with reporters this week.

• At last year’s upfronts, Amazon charged between $475,000 to $525,000 per 30-second in-game spot, according to Sportico.
• Other trends in the market, including a slowdown in scripted content due to the ongoing writers’ and actors’ strikes, are working in Thursday Night Football’s favor, Marine said.

“Because of some of the strikes and what’s happening in broader entertainment, more ad dollars are flowing to live sports, and there's nothing more premium than the NFL,”  Marine said. “And I would say we’re getting more than our share.”

Continue reading here.—KS

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Bud Light is hoping the NFL can help it win back drinkers following months of falling sales.

The beer brand has rolled out an ad titled “Easy to Sunday,” which follows its “Easy to Summer” campaign. According to Bud Light, it’s one of the brand’s largest NFL campaigns to date and will air throughout the season.

• In addition to the commercial, Bud Light is partnering with YouTube to give away $1 million in YouTubeTV Sunday Ticket subscriptions.
• It’s also teaming up with Fanatics to give away gift cards for team merchandise.

Big picture: The NFL marketing blitz comes after months of controversy for Bud Light, which started in April after trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney posted a customized beer can as part of a March Madness partnership. A conservative-led boycott of Bud Light ensued.

Since then, Bud Light has upped its marketing spend. Bud Light’s summer marketing campaign was its largest media spend to date, featuring a concert tour with bands like OneRepublic and Bush.

However, the brand is still bleeding: Last month, Mulvaney posted on TikTok and Instagram to blast the company for its response to the controversy, saying that no one had reached out to her in the aftermath and that she has faced harassment for months.

• Bud Light’s parent company, AB InBev, reported a 10.5% nosedive in its US revenue during its Q2 earnings earlier this month.
• This week, Modelo overtook Bud Light as the country’s bestselling beer so far this year, per NIQ data.

Still, there are signs the backlash might be softening: A Deutsche Bank survey recently found that fewer people are unlikely to buy the beer. Plus, Kid Rock, who played a role in starting the boycott by shooting cans of Bud Light, was spotted drinking one last week.—JS

This NFL season, fans will be seeing something new on the players’ jerseys, and it’s not sponsor patches (yet). It’s the number zero.

The league’s owners voted in March to allow players (outside of linemen) to wear No. 0, a move that seems to have sparked at least some excitement among athletes, with a dozen having picked the number as of June, according to CBS Sports. There’s at least one brand that’s enthusiastic about the change, too.

Earlier this month, longstanding NFL sponsor Pepsi announced that Pepsi Zero Sugar would be the “Official Zero of the NFL” for the 2023-2024 season. In addition to the new sponsorship, Pepsi Zero is capitalizing on the moment with a campaign that will extend into the Super Bowl, according to PepsiCo Sports Marketing Director Melissa Duhaime.

Continue reading here.—AM

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There are a lot of bad marketing tips out there. These aren’t those.

Search and rescue: TikTok has opened up its search ads to all brands.

Cheat sheet: An advertiser’s guide to the various Super Bowl broadcasts.

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