Amazon Moves Into Local Ad Market With Help From Broadcasters.

Amazon is building out its local advertising business, positioning itself as a new contender in markets traditionally dominated by broadcasters and regional media. The company’s Local Ads division, led by former CBS Radio and Entercom sales executive Jennifer Mock Donohue, is focusing on small and mid-sized businesses and getting them to tap into Amazon’s inventory —from audio and video to gaming platform Twitch.

“Our primary goal here is to democratize access to premium streaming content for local advertisers who’ve been out of these environments,” Donohue said. On a new episode of Borrell Associates’ “Local Marketing Trends” podcast, she explained the aim is to make Amazon’s ad technology accessible at the local level. “We can connect the dots for these small and medium sized companies to appreciate everything that national advertisers do here at Amazon,” Donohue said.

That effort is starting to take shape through collaborations with broadcasters with established local players such as iHeartMedia and cable TV’s Spectrum Reach “Through those relationships, we’re able to get really deep into the communities to make sure that we’re able to add-on precision and premium content to their portfolio,” Donohue said.

The partnerships allow radio and TV groups to extend advertiser campaigns into Amazon’s streaming and digital inventory, bringing new addressable and data-driven options to local clients. Donohue said Amazon already works with several local radio and television operators, as well as local cable operators, helping them pair geo-targeted campaigns with Amazon’s authenticated audience data.

Forging partnerships with established local players means a company like iHeart can package a radio buy with video ads on Prime Video, for instance.

“They’re enabling radio reps to pedal video ads and banner ads, that’s already played out to some extent, but I think that’s going to get even bigger,” President Gordon Borrell said. He points out that their surveys have shown local ad agencies are heavily focused on digital video.

Amazon’s local business is also gaining traction among agencies and regional brands drawn to the company’s scale and data precision. At the core of Amazon’s local strategy is the company’s programmatic sales platform, which enables advertisers and agencies to target audiences using what Donohue said are “trillions of authenticated signals across shopping, browsing, and streaming behaviors” pulled from Amazon’s vast online reach. The goal is to bring ease of buying to an increasingly fragmented marketplace.

“For local advertisers, it often feels like less opportunity and more like chaos,” Donohue said. “We can offer so much — but with the goal of simplifying.”

For local broadcasters, the pitch is that there is an opportunity to catch a building wave. Donohue pointed to growing investment in streaming TV, citing research that shows marketers are reallocating budgets from social media into streaming and addressable advertising, with roughly 80% of advertisers already using or planning to use addressable formats in 2025.

Corey Elliott, Executive VP of Local Market Intelligence at Borrell, thinks there are limits to the Amazon appeal, especially with the smallest advertisers or those that don’t work with an agency. Elliott believes many would prefer to work with a local rep that could guide them, rather than buy ads on Amazon like they would toilet paper.

“The smallest SMBs, those with fewer than 50 employees, are fairly protected. I don't think anybody's going after that long tail,” agreed Borrell. “This is for about the larger regional advertisers.”