Amazon expands brand partnerships with new video director appointments

The company has also scheduled several other meetings to develop brand-funded or brand-focused projects and work on integrating advertising into Prime Video entertainment.

Anderson will continue to lead content for Freevee, Amazon’s free ad-supported video service, as head of AVOD, unscripted programming and destination programming at Amazon MGM Studios. Her future role on Freevee was the subject of internal speculation after Amazon added advertising to Prime Video. Some expected Amazon to shut down Freevee, arguing it wouldn’t need a second ad-supported service. Anderson is best known as the director of Freevee’s biggest hit, “Jury Duty,” starring James Marsden, and some insiders expected her to be given a bigger creative role. Freevee still exists, but Amazon is expected to stop developing original content for it.

Brands are pouring money into filmed entertainment as the rise of ad-free streaming has made it harder to reach audiences with their messages. Streamers like Amazon and Hulu partner with companies like Marriott to distribute brand-produced videos and organize product placement. In theory, having a creative person as an intermediary can make this process easier.

Streamers added ad-supported tiers, which expanded the available ad inventory. However, advertisers still struggle to reach large television audiences. This is because the rise in popularity of streaming shows and movies, which contain few advertisements per hour, has not offset the decline in the popularity of traditional television, which has a much higher number of minutes of advertising per hour.

Here’s the full note from MGM Studios head of television Vernon Sanders announcing the changes:

Team –

In keeping with our Day 1 culture, our organization continues to evolve as we strive to deliver the entertainment content our customers crave. This applies to both our global audience and – with the introduction of advertising on Prime Video – our advertisers. It is critical that we deliver world-class experiences for our brand partners and the agencies they work with. With that in mind, I’m pleased to announce that Lauren Anderson’s responsibilities are expanding to support the efforts of Amazon MGM Studios.

In a newly created role Head of Brand and Content Innovation, Lauren will manage the Studios’ creative collaborations with brands, helping them find interesting collaboration moments across our Originals offering. Working closely with the Amazon Ads, Prime Video Ads and Studios Marketing teams, Lauren will lead the Studios’ efforts to generate advertising sponsorships, integrations, custom content and brand-supported originals for our AVOD, FAST and SVOD clients in the film and TV industries. This new venture will be supported by the Single Threaded Partnerships team. Additionally, Lauren continues to provide oversight to her AVOD Originals leaders and their creative teams, who have been instrumental in building a wide variety of Original programming successes for Prime Video, Amazon MGM Studios and Freevee:

Krystyna Miller will continue to report to Lauren, led by the newly appointed Scripted hybrid a team whose remit will be tailored to titles that reflect individual business models, hybrid formats and custom capabilities. This team will focus on unique, cost-effective creative and production, including brand-financed scripts.

Jenny Falkoff AND Alice Russo will continue to perform their roles as Head, Reality series AND Documentary series, accordingly, maintaining the reporting structure and helping to oversee a robust Unscripted group.

Benoit Landry will lead the newly created one Branded and conversations Group. While continuing to report directly to Lauren, Benoit’s group is intended to be a one-stop shop for the Studio to develop our brand-centric original films, as well as a resource for creators looking to leverage brands in a meaningful way across their franchises.

Justin Holt will lead Creative advertising operations. In addition to continually working to support the operational needs of our titles, this group will be obsessed with out-of-the-box ways to integrate advertising into creative. Justin will also oversee the ad-supported S&P process that our partner teams rely on to sell custom packages.

Claudine Trump will continue to lead Business operations for the Brand and Content Innovation team, serving as a center for information exchange, mechanism building and high-level organizational support across the group, with particular emphasis on the relationship between Studios, Amazon Ads and Prime Video Ads.

As part of these changes, among others: Traci Blackwellwhich will continue as Target Content Managerhe will now report to Kara Smith, head of Co-Pro development at Amazon MGM Studios.

Finally, Lauren will continue to oversee 1P FAST programming at Amazon MGM Studios delivered to Prime Video and Freevee. FAST is an increasingly popular way for customers to interact with content in a convenient environment. We want to ensure that our titles, including the MGM library, are packaged in a way that is attractive to both customers and advertisers. Helping to grow our offering of 1P/exclusive programming for Amazon MGM Studios’ FAST channels, this single-threaded team will continue to work closely with the Prime Video FAST team.

Please share this information with others in our organization.

We thank Lauren, her leaders and their team members for working diligently on these important endeavors on behalf of all our clients.

Vernon