Connected TV has grown up fast. Now advertisers want it to behave like the rest of their performance media stack.

That’s the pitch behind a new integration between Smartly and Amazon DSP, announced today. The partnership allows brands to extend Smartly-managed video campaigns into Amazon’s premium CTV inventory—including Prime Video and Fire TV—as well as third-party publisher supply.

The integration is available globally, with additional features slated for rollout later in 2026.

CTV Budgets Are Climbing—Expectations Are, Too

Streaming ad spend is accelerating. Nearly 70% of marketers plan to increase CTV budgets over the next year, according to industry surveys. But with those rising investments comes higher scrutiny.

Advertisers no longer see CTV as an experimental reach play. They want personalization, agility, and measurable outcomes—standards already common in social and programmatic channels.

Historically, CTV has lagged in creative flexibility and real-time optimization. Production bottlenecks, siloed workflows, and fragmented reporting have made it harder to treat streaming like a true performance channel.

Smartly’s integration aims to close that gap.

Three Core Capabilities: Creative, Activation, Measurement

The partnership brings Amazon streaming inventory directly into Smartly’s existing platform through three main pillars:

1. AI-Powered Creative Optimization
Smartly enables advertisers to personalize and optimize video creative across channels, extending AI-driven dynamic creative capabilities from social into streaming environments. The idea is to eliminate the traditional CTV production bottleneck that slows activation.

2. Unified Campaign Management
Advertisers can create, manage, and optimize Amazon DSP campaigns inside the same Smartly workflow used for social advertising. No separate platform hopping. No disconnected dashboards.

3. Cross-Channel Measurement and Budget Agility
The integration supports real-time performance visibility across social and CTV, enabling incremental reach analysis and faster budget reallocation based on live performance insights.

In practical terms, that means a high-performing social video can be adapted and deployed to Prime Video inventory quickly—without rebuilding creative or restructuring the campaign from scratch.

Why Amazon’s Inventory Matters

Access to Amazon’s premium streaming supply is a key component of the deal. Prime Video and Fire TV represent some of the most coveted ad-supported streaming real estate globally, offering both scale and first-party commerce signals.

For brands already advertising on Amazon’s retail and DSP ecosystem, the integration adds a performance-oriented CTV layer without introducing additional operational complexity.

“Driving impactful business outcomes across channels is key for advertisers,” said Erin McGee, Director of Partner and Advertiser Growth Marketing at Amazon Ads. The integration, she noted, allows Smartly advertisers to extend proven social creative into premium streaming inventory “in a fraction of the time.”

Speed is more than convenience—it’s competitive leverage in a media environment where trends and performance signals evolve daily.

The Convergence of Social, Commerce, and Entertainment

Smartly frames the move as part of a broader media convergence.

“As CTV matures, entertainment, commerce, and social are merging into one experience,” said Melissa Yang, SVP of Ecosystems & AI Applications at Smartly.

That convergence is reshaping expectations. Marketers now expect the same creative intelligence, personalization, and optimization in CTV that they rely on in paid social.

But streaming platforms have traditionally been walled gardens with limited creative iteration and slower feedback loops. By integrating directly with Amazon DSP, Smartly is effectively positioning itself as the connective tissue between social-style creative agility and premium streaming scale.

Competitive Context: CTV’s Performance Era

The CTV landscape is heating up.

Major DSPs, retail media networks, and adtech platforms are racing to position streaming as a full-funnel channel rather than a digital version of linear TV. Measurement improvements, shoppable ads, and retail data integration are accelerating that shift.

For Smartly, which built its reputation on creative automation and cross-channel execution, expanding deeper into CTV is a logical evolution. The company is betting that brands want one environment where creative insights, activation, and performance data are unified.

That unified model could prove especially valuable for global brands managing campaigns across social, retail media, and streaming—where fragmentation often leads to duplicated effort and inconsistent measurement.

What This Means for Marketers

The integration offers several potential advantages:

• Faster CTV activation using existing social creative

• AI-driven personalization adapted for streaming environments

• Real-time cross-channel performance insights

• Streamlined budget reallocation based on incremental reach

As streaming budgets grow, marketers face mounting pressure to justify ROI. Tools that make CTV measurable, agile, and creatively flexible bring the channel closer to the performance standards long expected from digital advertising.

The bigger question is whether advertisers will treat CTV as just another line item—or as a fully integrated part of their omnichannel growth engine.

Smartly’s integration with Amazon DSP suggests the industry is leaning toward the latter.

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