If you’ve been running Amazon ads for more than a few quarters, you’ve probably felt the squeeze.
Sponsored Products are more expensive than ever. Sponsored Brands and Streaming TV have become more crowded. And in competitive categories such as premium beauty, CPG, and grocery, the cost of acquiring incremental traffic continues to rise.
The problem is that most advertisers are competing for the same inventory inside Amazon’s walls, driving up CPCs and CPMs while limiting reach. Even Streaming TV and Prime Video ads, which deliver premium placements, have limited inventory and higher price tags.
Gaining an edge is tough, and brands are searching for new, cost-effective sources of external traffic to guide shoppers to Amazon before they even start their search.
That’s where Amazon DSP’s Online Video (OLV) comes in.
Unlike streaming formats, OLV taps into a vast supply of video placements across the open web. This abundant supply keeps CPMs low while still targeting Amazon audiences with precision.
But despite these advantages, OLV remains largely under the radar.
Amazon has poured much of its promotional energy into its premium streaming products, leaving OLV as a kind of “hidden gem” for advertisers. For now, that’s an advantage: lower competition means reduced costs and greater efficiency.
Early adopters of OLV are already seeing it deliver not only incremental traffic but also improved performance for Sponsored Ads, creating a measurable halo effect across their entire media mix.
This is not simply about finding a lower-cost awareness tactic, but unlocking a high-quality, scalable traffic source that strengthens the performance of every other Amazon media investment.
What Exactly is Online Video (OLV)?
Online Video, often shortened to OLV, is Amazon’s term for a video ad format that runs outside of Amazon’s own platform.
Unlike Sponsored Brand Video, which appears within Amazon shopping results, or Streaming TV (STV) ads, which run on connected devices inside streaming content, OLV targets video-supported ad inventory across the open web.
That means OLV placements can appear almost anywhere you encounter video advertising online: inside mobile apps, on websites, or in free-to-play games.
These could be pre-roll ads before content, mid-action videos during gameplay, or other short-form video spots delivered through Amazon’s publisher network and open exchanges.
The difference from Streaming TV is important: STV ads occupy premium spaces on connected devices like smart TVs and tablets, where viewers are watching long-form programming. OLV, on the other hand, lives in a separate ecosystem, built for reach, across a broader variety of online experiences.
The simplest way to think about OLV is: Take what you know about display advertising and just make it video.
From Flat Sales to Month-Over-Month Growth
Acadia’s early expansion into Online Video advertising began as a solution to a familiar problem: clients facing flat or declining traffic and revenue on Amazon.
One brand’s slow start to the year prompted our team to think beyond the platform. The solution was to push 100% awareness campaigns through OLV, driving high-quality off-site traffic back to Amazon product listings.
The results were immediate. Within a month, the brand saw:
- Increased impressions and product detail page views
- Month-over-month revenue growth
- A halo effect boosting sales across the entire catalog, not just the advertised products
Encouraged by the outcome, Acadia deployed the same tactic across multiple clients and consistently saw similar month-over-month gains.
The OLV Playbook: From Awareness to Conversions
While those early awareness-focused campaigns delivered strong results, we quickly learned that keeping OLV performance high required creative refreshes and product rotations to avoid audience fatigue.
Over time, our OLV approach has evolved to include:
- Refined audience targeting – Lifestyle and in-market segments produced the strongest awareness and click-through rates, as well as strong new-to-brand purchase performance.
- Lower-funnel tactics – Retargeting tests deliver promising CTRs and detail page view rates.
- AMC-powered audience building – Leveraging Amazon Marketing Cloud to create lookalike audiences based on purchase behavior, layered with demographic filters for precise targeting.
While more targeting layers can narrow reach and limit spend, they’ve significantly lowered cost per detail page view and cost per new-to-brand customer.
The takeaway: OLV isn’t just a reach play. With advanced audience insights and iterative creative testing, it becomes a flexible lever for both upper- and lower-funnel growth.
Funding OLV Without Increasing Your Total Budget
When budgets are tight, adding OLV to the media mix usually means reallocating funds from somewhere else. Our general recommendation is to begin with your primary goal in mind. Look for where your traffic is least effective at hitting your goal and go from there.
We start with a full-funnel review, from awareness to consideration, purchase, and loyalty, to identify the lowest-performing segments for the brand’s primary KPIs (click-through rate, detail page view rate, or new-to-brand acquisition).
The reallocation typically follows this sequence:
- Cut from consideration campaigns if they’re delivering the lowest performance.
- Reduce loyalty spending (like retargeting past purchasers) if it’s not bringing in incremental customers.
- Trim inefficient search budgets if those impressions are less cost-effective and less incremental.
In addition, evaluating OLV’s impact requires looking beyond ROAS. In isolation, OLV may appear to have a lower ROAS than other tactics, but the key metric is incrementality: lift in glance views and total sales before vs. after running OLV.
Another aspect we consider here at Acadia is the AMC Path to Purchase. Our reporting consistently shows OLV’s role in long customer journeys, sometimes as the initial touchpoint, other times as the final push that drives purchase.
In head-to-head comparisons, OLV has often outperformed Streaming TV in driving these actions.
Making the Case for OLV Through an Ecosystem Approach
When pitching OLV to our clients, we always frame it within the broader advertising ecosystem.
DSP, PPC, and other formats shouldn’t be viewed in isolation. Their combined impact across the customer journey is what drives results.
A multi-touch strategy often reveals stronger returns than any one channel evaluated on its own.
Testing is essential. While results vary, successful OLV campaigns have consistently shown two primary outcomes: growth in glance views and growth in total revenue.
If those indicators aren’t moving in the right direction, the strategy can be adjusted. But for brands experiencing flat or declining performance, OLV offers a proven lever to reverse the trend.
A common barrier to adoption is the perceived need for new creative assets. In reality, existing video content, such as sponsored brand videos, often works well for OLV, eliminating the cost and time of producing entirely new material.
In fact, if a video is suitable for sponsored brand campaigns, it’s typically strong enough for OLV. From there, brands can explore performance creative testing to identify the most effective formats.
Recent testing has shown vertical video formats outperforming traditional horizontal styles in certain placements. With Amazon’s rollout of vertical video for OLV, advertisers now have access to an expanded set of inventory and fresh opportunities to optimize performance.
Big Results, Even on Small Budgets
So how much do you need to get started? OLV offers more flexibility, delivering measurable results even at lower spend levels.
While we’ve seen clients from both ends of the spectrum get results, we usually recommend a higher-level budget to start deploying OLV. That said, we’ve run campaigns with as little as $2,000/month that still produced a significant impact. That particular brand was facing a 12% YoY sales decline and introduced a modest OLV budget into their existing DSP strategy. Within the first month, sales grew 10% YoY. By month two, they were up roughly 15% YoY.
These results show OLV’s potential as a nimble, scalable tactic, even in tight budget scenarios. Even when budget constraints prevent a large initial investment, testing with smaller allocations can produce quick, positive shifts, especially when OLV is layered into an existing programmatic mix.
Bottom Line
Amazon OLV has been sitting in the shadows while other formats fight for attention and budget.
With lower competition, plentiful inventory, and precise Amazon audience targeting across the open web, it’s proving to be a quiet workhorse for traffic and sales growth.
Are you willing to test it? It might reignite momentum without blowing up your budget.
Get in touch with our team and learn more about our approach.