Sky Media and Amazon Ads today made Sky's premium video advertising supply and audiences available to advertisers in the UK and Ireland through Amazon Ads Agent, according to Sky Media. Reserved-price deals are open immediately; invitation-only auction deals are due later, with no date given.

In Short

Sky now sells ad space in its streaming apps and Sky-branded products to advertisers who use Amazon's ad-buying platform, in the UK and Ireland. That matters because brands can place Sky's viewers on the same plan as the rest of their video buying, and because another large British video seller has joined Amazon's list of suppliers. Reserved-price deals work from the announcement, other deal types come later, and no prices or fees were published.

What Sky Media and Amazon Ads announced

Sky Media and Amazon Ads announced the arrangement today, according to Sky Media. Customers of Amazon Ads can reach Sky's audiences across Sky Go, NOW, Sky Glass, Sky Q and Sky Stream - five named Sky products - through one connection, according to Sky Media.

The content on offer spans entertainment, drama, live sport and news. Sky Media describes Sky News as the UK's leading commercial news broadcaster and says its sport lineup is the UK's broadest, naming Premier League football, European and PGA tour golf, world darts and Formula 1. Those are Sky's own characterisations, and the release offers no audience figures to test them.

The same connection also carries content from Sky Media's partners, according to Sky Media. HBO Max, Discovery+ and TNT Sports are named. Advertisers can apply what Sky calls its proprietary audience signals to that supply, although the release does not say what the signals are made of or how many households they cover.

Omnicom Media took part as an early access partner. According to Sky Media, Omnicom has already worked with leading brands to fold Sky Media into streaming TV campaigns, planning, activating and measuring across Sky's supply alongside wider video investment, all through Amazon Ads. Melinda Clow, Head of Platforms & Technology at Omnicom Media UK, said the integration helps "streamline access to high-quality video inventory" for clients, according to Sky Media.

Deal types and timing

Programmatic Guaranteed deals are available immediately, according to Sky Media. In that format a buyer commits to a fixed price and an agreed volume before a campaign runs, bypassing the open auction while still travelling through automated systems. Private Marketplace deals, in which a publisher invites selected buyers to bid above a floor price, are to follow through Amazon Ads Agent. Sky Media gave no date.

The pairing mirrors the structure Channel 4 chose when it opened its video-on-demand supply to five buying platforms on June 22, 2026. For the Amazon DSP route, Channel 4 offered both Programmatic Guaranteed and Private Marketplace deals, with Amazon DSP access scheduled for the third quarter of 2026.

What Amazon Ads Agent is

According to Sky Media, Amazon Ads Agent is the new name of a unified platform that brings sponsored ads and Display, Video and Audio together. Advertisers can build campaigns with manual tools, let Amazon's AI optimise on their behalf, or mix the two depending on campaign goal.

The case Sky Media makes

Sky Media anchors the release in fragmentation. With 70% of UK households having access to a subscription video-on-demand service, according to Barb, and viewing spread across services and devices, planning and buying video at scale is becoming more complex, according to Sky Media. The release cites the Barb Establishment Survey for the first quarter of 2026, published on May 21, 2026. The link in its footnote points to a Barb item whose web address refers to 20.8m UK homes with access to an SVOD service in that quarter.

Pippa Scaife, Director of Digital Advertising at Sky Media, framed the arrangement as a response. According to Scaife, the future "will be defined by reducing complexity without compromising on quality", and the Amazon route gives advertisers more choice in how they access Sky's audiences. Phil Christer, Managing Director, UK, at Amazon Ads, said the integration gives advertisers "a new way to reach those audiences", according to Sky Media.

Is programmatic access really the answer to fragmentation, or one more door added to an already crowded building? The release does not engage with that question. What it does establish is direction of travel. Guideline analyst Sean Wright estimated that two years ago about 82% of global streaming video supply was sold direct, with the remainder transacted programmatically. Each added broadcaster connection to a buying platform is a candidate to move that ratio.

Price is the unanswered part. An assessment by Ian Whittaker of Liberty Sky Advisors, prepared under an engagement with the terrestrial network operator Arqiva and drawing on Guideline data, placed UK linear and pay-television equivalent rates at four to five dollars per thousand impressions, against roughly 22 to 25 dollars for broadcaster streaming. None of those rates relate directly to the Sky deals announced today, since the release states no prices.

Amazon's renamed platform

The product name itself has moved. Amazon introduced Ads Agent as an AI agent for automated campaign managementon November 11, 2025, a day after a revamped Campaign Manager merged sponsored ads with Amazon DSP in beta. At unBoxed on September 29, 2026, Amazon renamed the Amazon DSP as DVA, for display, video and audio, and folded the console and the DSP together as the Amazon Ads Agent, a conversational interface spanning planning, creation, optimisation, measurement and support. The same coverage recorded Amazon's second-quarter 2026 advertising services revenue at $19.8 billion.

A related product is on a slower clock. DVA+, a four-step campaign builder, entered closed beta in the United States on September 29, 2026, with open beta expected in late October 2026 and general availability across 35 markets targeted for the first quarter of 2027. Nothing in the Sky release links DVA+ to Sky supply, and the UK sits outside the closed beta.

For a buyer working inside a demand-side platform, the practical question is whether Sky deals appear in the same workflow as the AI-run campaign types or sit alongside them. The release says advertisers may use manual tools, Amazon's AI or both. It does not say which options apply to Sky's supply.

One more UK video seller on Amazon's list

Sky is the latest in a sequence. Netflix and Amazon Ads announced on September 10, 2025 that Amazon DSP would carry Netflix supply in 11 markets, the UK among them, from the fourth quarter of 2025. Amazon's shopping, streaming and browsing signals went live on Netflix buys in EMEA on May 18, 2026, with Christer confirming the launch on LinkedIn four days earlier. Channel 4 followed on June 22, 2026. In roughly thirteen months, then, three large UK video sellers have been connected, or scheduled to be connected, to the same buying system.

Cost shapes the comparison. Amazon offers discounted fees when its DSP is used to buy third-party connected television supply. Whether any such discount applies to Sky deals is not stated.

The agency angle has a history as well. AdExchanger reported on November 18, 2025 that two sources saw Omnicom agencies shifting spend from The Trade Desk to Amazon DSP; Omnicom confirmed nothing, saying only that it works with a broad range of demand-side partners. Omnicom's role as Sky's early access partner is documented in the release, but any wider spend shift remains an unconfirmed report.

The corporate backdrop at Sky

The announcement lands while Sky's own structure is in motion. Reuters reported on June 24, 2026 that Sky and ITV had agreed terms, and the two companies confirmed on July 6, 2026 a deal worth up to 1.6 billion pounds for ITV's Media and Entertainment business: 1.2 billion pounds in cash, the transfer of Love Productions and an earn-out of up to 0.2 billion pounds. The unit includes ITV's linear channels and the ITVX streaming platform. The Competition and Markets Authority issued its invitation to comment on July 23, with submissions closing on August 6, according to the same Whittaker assessment cited above. The Sky Media release says nothing about ITV supply.

Comcast, Sky's owner, said on June 29, 2026 that it would separate NBCUniversal and Sky from its broadband and wireless business through a tax-free spin-off expected to take about 12 months. The announcement did not specify which company would keep FreeWheel and Universal Ads. That matters because Sky, Channel 4 and ITV announced on June 17, 2025 a joint self-service television marketplace planned for 2026, powered by Comcast Advertising's Universal Ads and FreeWheel technology. Sky's supply is therefore reachable, or planned to be reachable, through at least two infrastructures with different owners: Amazon's, and the Comcast-linked one.

What the release leaves out

Several details that buyers typically need are absent from the Sky Media release:

  • Pricing, fees or minimum commitments for either deal type.
  • Impression volumes, formats, ad load or frequency controls.
  • A date for Private Marketplace deals.
  • Which measurement currency applies. Barb launched its Ads Hub on January 27, 2026, and Amazon Prime Video integration with it is under way, but the release does not say whether Sky buys through Amazon will be evaluated against Barb data.
  • The Ireland scope, including whether the supply and signals in Ireland match those in the UK.
  • Whether Sky's other buying routes change.

Sky Media cites Barb for household reach and Omnicom for early use; neither supplies results from live campaigns.

Why it matters for marketers

Broadcaster supply keeps moving from negotiated sales into systems that buyers already use for the rest of their video spend. For the marketing community the signal is less about Sky than about the number of premium British video sellers now reachable from a single Amazon workflow. Netflix, Channel 4 and Sky each arrived through a different set of deal types and dates.

The competitive reading cuts both ways. Broadcasters gain reach among buyers who plan in Amazon's tools, while Amazon adds premium supply to those tools. Whittaker's assessment concluded that money leaving the broadcaster ecosystem accrues overwhelmingly to Google, Meta and Amazon. A broadcaster choosing to sell inside one of those companies' tools is a different case from budget leaving for it, but the two sit close together in the same ledger. Whether Sky's supply will be traded more on reserved deals than on curated auctions, and at what cost, will become clearer only when the Private Marketplace stage arrives.

For British broadcasters the open items are measurement and fees. For buyers, the open items are the same two.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Sky Media and Amazon Ads, with Omnicom Media as an early access partner. Quoted for the companies are Pippa Scaife (Sky Media), Phil Christer (Amazon Ads) and Melinda Clow (Omnicom Media UK).

What: Sky's premium video advertising supply and audiences, across Sky Go, NOW, Sky Glass, Sky Q and Sky Stream plus partner content from HBO Max, Discovery+ and TNT Sports, can now be bought through Amazon Ads Agent. Programmatic Guaranteed deals are live; Private Marketplace deals are to follow.

When: Today (October 6, 2026). No date was given for Private Marketplace deals.

Where: The UK and Ireland, through the Amazon Ads Agent platform.

Why: According to Sky Media, viewing is spread across many services and devices, with 70% of UK households holding a subscription video service per Barb, and a single programmatic connection is pitched as a way to cut complexity in video buying.