Amazon’s Black Friday NFL game is commanding substantial ad rates

Maybe it’s no surprise for the world’s largest retailer, but Amazon is in for a lucrative haul for its Black Friday NFL game.

According to a report by Anthony Crupi in Sportico, advertisers are paying between $650,000 and $750,000 per 30-second advertising spot for Friday’s tilt between the Kansas City Chiefs and Las Vegas Raiders. In terms of standalone regular season contests, that rate slots behind NBC’s Sunday Night Football package ($1 million-plus) and right around ESPN’s Monday Night Football ($665,000) for a 30-second spot. Amazon’s normal Thursday Night Football package pulls an average of $565,000 per spot.

There are, of course, obvious benefits to advertising with Amazon versus a traditional broadcaster. To start, Amazon’s games draw a decidedly younger median viewer. The median age for a Thursday Night Football viewer so far this season is 48.4 years old compared to 55.4 years old for NFL games on linear television and 63 years old for broadcast games in primetime.

Then there’s the unique ability for Amazon to convert ad watchers into product buyers. Per Sportico, citing data from marketing research agency EDO, viewers of last season’s Amazon Black Friday game between the Miami Dolphins and New York Jets were 78% more likely to search for the brands and products advertising during Amazon’s game compared to the Thanksgiving games aired on broadcast television the prior day.

Last season’s Black Friday game didn’t blow the roof off from a viewership standpoint. Dolphins-Jets drew just under 10 million viewers in the first year of the NFL’s Black Friday experiment. For comparison, Amazon’s Thursday Night Football package last season averaged nearly 12 million viewers.

But given consumers’ propensity to shop on the day following Thanksgiving, advertisers were not scared off from the marginally smaller audience. Add to that the Chiefs’ blockbuster appeal with quarterback Patrick Mahomes, tight end Travis Kelce, and his girlfriend, and Amazon is set to cash-in handsomely on Friday’s game.

[Sportico]