Prime Video / Amazon Ads · Sr. Product Manager · 2023 to 2024
Unlocking $100M+ ARR with program-level brand safety
Apple wouldn't spend on Prime Video without program-level brand controls. Here's how closing a structural gap in the ad catalog unlocked $100M+ ARR and set the standard for brand safety across the surface.
ARR unlocked
Onboarded as launch advertiser
Orgs aligned across Prime Video & Ads
Context
Prime Video launched ads, but top-tier brand advertisers wouldn't commit budget without program-level brand controls. The gap wasn't a feature request. It was structural: the content catalog wasn't modelled for ad adjacency decisions, which meant brands had no auditable way to control where their ads appeared.
Problem
Brands like Apple needed the ability to opt in or out at show and program level, with guardrails they could stand behind internally. Delivering that required alignment across catalog, ad-tech, legal, and editorial: five organisations with different priorities and no shared framework.
Approach
01
Translated brand demand into a product contract
Embedded with the sales team to understand what "brand safe" actually meant for each top advertiser. Converted qualitative brand requirements into a single, precise targeting and blocking specification that engineering could build to and legal could sign off on.
02
Aligned five orgs around one framework
Wrote a single framework document that gave each organisation a clear slice of ownership. Ran weekly mechanisms until accountability was distributed and progress was no longer dependent on any one team moving first.
03
Hold the line on granularity
When pressure came from senior leadership to ship a simpler version faster, I pushed back. The data was clear: the simpler version wouldn't unlock the deals we were building for. Holding that line was the decision that made the outcome possible.
Outcomes
- →Unlocked $100M+ ARR on Prime Video ads
- →Brought Apple's ad spend onto Prime Video as a launch brand
- →Established the program-level model now reused across other brand controls
Reflections
Stakeholder management at this scale is mostly editorial, picking which decisions surface to which leader, in which forum, in which week. The product was the easy part.
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