If you’ve been tracking the CTV market, you’ve seen rivals clash and alliances form and fracture as platforms build their walled gardens.
Well, the partnership between Amazon and Roku is a perfect example of how quickly those garden walls can come tumbling down—at least when there’s enough scale and opportunity to be had by opening up a closed ecosystem.
Announced at Cannes Lions on Monday, the deal gives Amazon’s DSP exclusive third-party access to Roku’s audience data. Amazon buyers can now also buy ads across Roku’s vast inventory—including The Roku Channel and other major streaming apps. The partnership is set to roll out in Q4 2025.
It’s an interesting reversal in strategy, as Amazon once seemed wary of Roku as a competitor. But competition for CTV budgets can give rise to unexpected alliances.
From CTV Frenemies to Allies
With Amazon and Roku’s new partnership, advertisers can now reach a combined 80 million U.S. CTV households, roughly 80% of the market, with improved targeting and frequency controls.
“With nearly half of all TV streaming time in the U.S. happening on Roku, per Comscore, and the power and depth of Amazon in retail and beyond, Roku and Amazon are uniquely positioned to help advertisers drive full-funnel campaign outcomes,” a Roku spokesperson told AdMonsters.
Plus, through the use of a unified identity solution, buyers can eliminate media waste across their Amazon and Roku campaigns, the spokesperson added.
This new era of openness follows a long period of Amazon closely guarding its platform from possible competitors.
Not long ago, Amazon allowed third-party DSPs like The Trade Desk and Dataxu to serve ads and use their own IDs on Amazon’s Fire TV. That changed after Roku acquired Dataxu in 2019, prompting Amazon to shut down the program and cut off access for both Dataxu and The Trade Desk.
Some in the industry saw the move as Amazon protecting its platform from a newly competitive Roku. But for the sake of scale, Amazon is now making an exception. Although, notably, the data matching is happening within Amazon’s DSP.
Dealing in Data
The technical backbone of the partnership is a new identity resolution service that gives Amazon DSP access to Roku’s audience signals directly via the Roku device’s operating system. Which is to say, with no third-party ID resolution in the middle.
This is the first time Roku has shared these ID signals “at an OS level,” according to the company’s spokesperson. And it should help Amazon DSP drive campaign performance for Roku’s US audience, they added.
The integration also gives advertisers consistency across different streaming channels, including third-party apps accessed via Roku devices, the spokesperson said. This provides more accurate audience targeting, frequency control, and measurement than previously possible.
While this OS-level data connection is exclusive to Amazon DSP, Roku emphasized its ongoing commitment to interoperability.
“Roku remains interoperable with most major DSPs including The Trade Desk, Google DV360, Yahoo, Amazon, and others,” the Roku spokesperson said “We will continue to work with other DSPs in the space and further our integrations in commitment to providing buyers with choice of their preferred platforms.”
Protecting the Good Stuff
But does giving Amazon DSP unique data access give it unique insights into Roku’s audiences, or exclusive access to certain inventory?
On the contrary, Roku is keeping some of its ad platform’s most premium features to itself.
“Roku offers unique inventory, targeting, and measurement that is not available solely through Amazon Ads,” the Roku spokesperson said. “For example, Roku offers advertising solutions that are native to our home screen, such as our Marquee ad, which can only be purchased directly through Roku.”
Some of Roku’s in-stream video capabilities are also exclusive to Roku, like Action Ads, which overlay a call to action, like a QR code, on top of the video content, the spokesperson said. And Roku offers deeper measurement insights that are only available to buyers that work directly with Roku, they added.
A Kinder, Gentler Streaming War
As we’ve covered in AdMonsters, the fight for streaming TV ad budgets has been defined by fragmentation and a lack of cross-platform measurement.
Amazon’s initial openness to third-party DSPs was a step toward interoperability, but Roku’s Dataxu acquisition showed how quickly alliances can shift once the landscape gets more competitive.
Now, with Roku and Amazon forming a united front, we’re seeing how that competition can push former rivals together in pursuit of a shared competitive advantage. It’s a new model for CTV collaboration—one that could set the stage for more open, performance-driven advertising across streaming platforms.