By Carl Wartzack, CEO of WBX
Every so often, a move in the advertising ecosystem forces you to take a beat, not because it was unexpected, but because of what it represents. The newly announced partnership between Roku and Amazon is one of those moments.
For years, these two companies have battled for dominance in the connected TV (CTV) landscape. Roku has long led in U.S. market share. Amazon has wielded its unparalleled scale and retail-advertising machine. But now, they’re teaming up, and the implications for advertisers, publishers, and platforms alike are profound.
At WBX, we view this partnership as a tipping point.
An Audience-Led Alliance
Roku and Amazon together now offer advertisers access to over 80 million households and more than 80% of all CTV accounts in the U.S. That’s not a data play. That’s a dominance play.
By opening Roku’s coveted inventory to Amazon’s DSP (demand-side platform), marketers will now have a more unified, scaled, and performance-ready way to reach streaming viewers. And in a fragmented media environment, that matters.
For advertisers, this means:
- Simplified buying through a single interface
- More precise targeting using Amazon’s retail and behavioral data
- Streamlined measurement that connects upper-funnel impressions to lower-funnel conversions
This is exactly the kind of convergence WBX champions every day: content meets commerce, awareness meets attribution.
Why This Is a Big Win for Roku, Too
Let’s not overlook the strategic move on Roku’s part.
While their platform dominance remains intact, monetization has been a tougher hill, particularly in the face of macroeconomic ad slowdowns and intensified competition. Partnering with Amazon gives Roku:
- Access to Amazon’s vast pool of advertisers, including thousands of retail-native brands
- Greater fill rates and yield for its ad inventory
- Momentum toward its goal of being not just the biggest CTV platform, but the most valuable one for advertisers
It’s a reminder that in today’s media economy, openness and interoperability are no longer threats, they’re accelerants.
What This Means for Brands
This isn’t just a win for tech platforms. It’s a win for the brands we serve.
With CTV becoming a core component of the modern media mix, WBX has seen how challenging it can be to bridge the gap between who sees the ad and who buys the product. This partnership starts to collapse that gap.
Brands now have the opportunity to:
- Pair high-impact storytelling on Roku’s premium CTV inventory
- With high-intent targeting from Amazon’s retail intelligence
- All managed through a performance-native platform they already trust
It’s performance marketing, on a 65-inch screen.
The Takeaway: We’re Moving into the Era of “Commerce CTV”
This Roku–Amazon alliance represents more than media access. It’s a signal that the lines between brand and performance, platform and partner, walled garden and open web are not just blurring. They’re merging.
At WBX, we see this as a green light for bold, measurable, omnichannel strategies that treat connected TV not as the top of the funnel, but as a full-funnel force.
The future of advertising is not about buying impressions. It’s about building systems.
And partnerships like this? They make those systems smarter, stronger, and faster.