By James Calloway

Colgate-Palmolive spent $1.51 billion on advertising in the first six months of 2026 alone, according to SEC filings — and it hasn't run a Super Bowl ad in seven years. Yet the toothpaste maker is all in on football on Amazon.

That combination is the clearest sign of what Amazon has built with Thursday Night Football. As the NFL season and the holiday shopping season kick off together, U.S. advertisers are shifting more budget into Amazon's ad inventory, and TNF has become the company's most useful tool for expanding its advertising and streaming business.

Why does one show work for two very different advertisers?

Amazon is running a two-pronged pitch.

• Prong one: brands that don't sell on Amazon at all. TNF's audience has helped the company convert advertisers such as American Express — brands with no products on the e-commerce site. The timing matters: DSP providers are locked in fierce competition for advertiser budgets, and Amazon is winning share.
• Prong two: brands that sell on Amazon but skip sports. Colgate fits here. It moves product through Amazon's retail platform, but its sports marketing has largely centered on a Madison Square Garden sponsorship for Big East March Madness. Amazon is positioning its live sports portfolio as an upsell for exactly this kind of advertiser.

The takeaway: one live sports asset is doing double duty — acquiring non-endemic brands and upselling existing retail partners.

What does the Colgate example actually show?

The numbers frame the story. Colgate-Palmolive's $1.51 billion ad spend in the first half of 2026 came despite a seven-year Super Bowl absence. Its most visible sports property, the Madison Square Garden sponsorship tied to Big East March Madness, sits in college basketball, not the NFL.

Even so, the company committed to football on Amazon. For Amazon, that's the ideal outcome: a retail-platform advertiser with no history in sports buying premium live inventory, rather than splitting that budget across traditional TV networks.

The takeaway: Amazon isn't just competing for sports budgets — it's creating them, pulling advertisers into the category who never bought it before.

What's next as the season unfolds?

The stakes grow from here. The NFL season runs straight into holiday shopping, the period when retailers and their brand partners spend hardest. Amazon's pitch — buy the football audience, reach shoppers, close the loop through the retail platform — lands strongest when those two calendars overlap.

Expect the TNF effect to keep compounding: more non-endemic names like American Express testing streaming sports, and more retail-native brands like Colgate moving up from standard marketplace ads into live inventory.