Amazon announced yesterday that its Prime Video service is introducing location-based interactive video advertisements in the U.S., allowing local businesses to reach target audiences in specific areas. The ad unit, Interactive Video Ads (IVA), will help advertisers customize national TV commercials with location-specific content such as local pricing and nearest business details based on state data and ZIP codes. The new format, expected to intensify the growing competition between streaming services and broadcasters, is part of a larger effort to bring more small businesses and local buyers to CTV. It also arrives as major streamers, including Prime Video, are pursuing new models such as pause ads.

Amazon’s location-based format “allows advertisers to transform a single TV commercial into thousands of variants based on ZIP codes or tens of variations based on states without creating multiple creative assets,” explains TV Tech. “Advertisers can customize both messaging and clickthrough URLs for their ads through the Amazon DSP Video template.”

“The location-based streaming video ad unit bridges the gap between national reach and local relevance, which was previously not possible for many regional advertisers,” notes MediaPost.

Prime Video currently touts more than 300 million monthly ad-supported viewers in the U.S. The new ad unit plans to initially prioritize medium- and small-size businesses such as auto dealerships, financial services, grocery stores and various retail locations.

“For brands with location-specific businesses, like auto dealerships, financial institutions, insurance providers, or restaurants, the offering ensures that the people seeing those interactive ads actually have access to their services or are in driving distance of their businesses,” Adweek reports.

According to Jennifer Donohue, director of local sales for Amazon Ads, the new ad unit could obviously expand the company’s advertiser base, but also offers the potential benefit of establishing new relationships with consumers by reaching out to local communities. “When I think about streaming TV,” Donohue told AdExchanger, “I feel like it’s made for that one-to-one relationship with the viewer, and so it becomes very personal.”

Meanwhile, additional experimentation continues in the evolving ad space. Reddit, for example, “is now testing a customizable interactive advertising format with select advertisers,” reports MediaPost, listing “Paramount Pictures, Electronic Arts, the Ad Council, and Red Bull among a handful of advertisers currently testing Interactive Ads.”

And major streamers including Amazon, Netflix, HBO Max, Peacock and Disney have been testing formats such as pause ads, designed to make the advertising experience more in line with the viewer’s choice.

“Media companies are trying to make the pause ads more useful than typical video commercials,” writes Variety. “A 30-second TV ad is generally employed to generate awareness of a product, so that customers will remember it when the time comes to shop. But pause ads are now appearing with QR codes that let viewers click to find out more information about what’s for sale. Most executives believe more pause ads will soon be ‘shoppable’ and take viewers that much closer to an actual purchase.”

Related:
Apple TV Won’t Show Ads, but ‘Pause Ads’ Are Growing Elsewhere, 9to5Mac, 11/10/25
ChatGPT Ads Are Coming — and They Won’t Look Like Google Ads, Search Engine Land, 11/7/25
Reddit Puts More Focus on Automated Targeting in Ads Manager, Social Media Today, 11/9/25