Hasbro Makes Big Play on Prime Video Ads With Play-Doh, Peppa Pig

Hasbro didn’t just toy with the idea of Prime Video‘s new ad tier.

An early adopter of Prime Video’s ad-supported inventory, the toy and entertainment company has seen significant success in the first months of 2024, according to a new Amazon Ads blog. Through campaigns for Peppa Pig and Play-Doh, the company has increased toy sales, branded searches, ad recall and brand favorability.

Following Prime Video’s ad tier launch in January, Hasbro rolled out an early campaign for Peppa Pig on the service in the U.K. for six weeks from February through March, testing out multiple creative messages to drive higher conversion and performance in brand lift studies examining purchase intent.

The U.K. campaign was activated against a Prime Video run-of-service package, which then layered audiences featuring households with children in the home and adults between 18 and 34.

Jennifer Burch, senior director of global media at Hasbro, said in a statement that the company’s full-funnel capabilities created an enticing offer.

“Prime Video offers an incredible roster of shows,” Burch said. “From a media standpoint, we want to align our ads to premium, brand-safe content, and the added benefit to utilizing Prime Video is that we are reaching a qualified audience through Amazon first-party data.”

Among the results, Hasbro reached 7 million unique users across the campaign, found that 68% of Peppa Pig purchases during that period were new to brand and saw a 21% year-over-year increase in branded searches and an 18% year-over-year increase in sales for Peppa Pig toy products on Amazon.

Additionally, a third-party brand lift study from Lucid confirmed increases in ad recall, brand awareness and purchase intent in audiences who saw the ads, including a 14% increase in brand favorability among audiences 18 through 34 with children in the home.

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Making Doh

The campaign’s success shaped the company’s Play-Doh marketing in the U.S., with Hasbro also launching multiple creatives and optimizing over time.

“Our goal with Play-Doh was to test if adding Prime Video as an upper-funnel tactic on a broader plan would bring in new consumers into the purchase journey,” Burch said.

According to the company, its Play-Doh ads reached 7.2 million unique shoppers—6.7 million of which were not reached by display ads during the same campaign. In addition, 79% of Play-Doh’s total sales attributed to the Prime Video campaign were from new-to-brand customers. Play-Doh also had a 14% increase in ad recall and a 4% increase in brand favorability, according to an Amazon Brand Lift study.

Overall, the brand experienced a 6.4% higher purchase rate in customers who saw sponsored ads, display ads and Prime Video ads compared to customers who saw only sponsored ads.

Being upfront about the opportunity

Ahead of this year’s TV upfront negotiations, media buyers told ADWEEK that Prime Video would be one to watch during talks, since the company flooded the market with inventory following its ad tier launch.

ADWEEK learned that buyers were split about Prime Video’s more traditional May upfront presentation; however, something that captured all of their attention was the company noting that its ad tier reaches a monthly average of 200 million global customers, with 115 million in the U.S.

Thus far, the company’s ad-supported tiers have launched in the U.S., U.K., Germany, Austria, Canada, France, Italy, Spain, Mexico and Australia.

“With our clean room and other leading adtech, we can help all advertisers connect awareness and brand objectives directly to sales outcomes and category growth, full-funnel advertising at scale for everyone,” Alan Moss, vice president of global ad sales for Amazon, said during the company’s upfront presentation.