Amazon Ads and iHeartMedia have announced a significant expansion of their partnership, creating a new programmatic audio offering that promises to be a game-changer for advertisers. This deal is more than just a collaboration; it’s a statement about the future of omnichannel marketing and Amazon’s growing dominance beyond e-commerce.
What’s the Deal?
The core of the partnership is the integration of iHeartMedia’s vast streaming audio portfolio into the Amazon Demand-Side Platform (DSP). For advertisers, this unlocks a massive new pool of premium inventory and, crucially, access to Amazon’s powerful data.
- Immediate Access: Amazon DSP customers can immediately buy programmatic ads against iHeartMedia’s streaming music and live streaming radio content.
- Future Scale: Plans are in place to include iHeartPodcasts and the unparalleled reach of its broadcast radio stations in 2026. This move effectively makes traditional broadcast inventory addressable, measurable, and available programmatically—making broadcast radio behave like digital media.
- The Data Advantage: Advertisers can now leverage Amazon’s trillions of first-party shopping, streaming, and browsing signals to target iHeart’s audience with high precision. This is the holy grail for performance marketers, linking ad exposure to real-world consumer behavior.
Why This Matters for Advertisers
For brands looking to cut through the noise, this partnership offers three key advantages:
- Massive, Addressable Scale: iHeartMedia reaches nine out of ten Americans monthly through its broadcast radio alone, and is the largest podcast publisher. Combining this colossal reach with the targeting precision of Amazon’s first-party data creates an advertising product few competitors can match.
- Simplified Omnichannel Strategy: The Amazon DSP is designed to be a one-stop-shop. This integration allows advertisers to manage audio alongside their display, video, and streaming TV campaigns, simplifying campaign management and enabling cohesive cross-channel strategies.
- Unique Measurement & Attribution: Amazon’s first-party insights and clean-room technology will provide advertisers with a clear line of sight on campaign performance—from the audio ad impression all the way through to an action or purchase. This level of measurable ROI is invaluable in a media landscape often criticized for attribution gaps.
As Lisa Coffey, Chief Business Officer at iHeartMedia, noted, this deal is “another step in making broadcast radio behave like digital media; addressable, measurable, and available programmatically, so marketers of all sizes can buy with greater ease and consistency.”
Amazon’s Deeper Dive into Audio
This move solidifies Amazon’s ambition to be a dominant player in the wider media and advertising ecosystem, not just retail. The company has steadily built out its audio presence, not just through devices like Alexa and Echo, but also with its Amazon Music service and ownership of the premium podcast network, Wondery.
By securing access to iHeartMedia’s premium inventory—the largest audio media company in the U.S.—Amazon is directly challenging other major players in the audio and digital advertising space. For years, the two companies have collaborated on voice technology and device-based advertising. This programmatic deal is the logical, and most powerful, next evolution of that relationship.
The Bottom Line
The expanded partnership between Amazon Ads and iHeartMedia is a watershed moment for digital audio advertising. It merges the scale of broadcast audio with the precision of Amazon’s e-commerce data, offering a new level of addressability and measurement. For brands, this means better campaigns, more efficiency, and the chance to connect with listeners at virtually every point in their day—from their smart speaker at home to their phone on a commute.
As audio consumption continues its dramatic growth, this programmatic powerhouse is set to redefine how brands think about their sound strategy.
