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When you buy an annual membership or give a one-time contribution, we’ll give a membership to someone who can’t afford access. It’s a simple way for you to support Vox’s journalism and share it with someone who needs it  We rely on readers like you to fund our journalism. Will you support our work and become a Vox Member today?  (https://www.vox.com/support-now?itm_campaign=givingtuesday25&itm_medium=site&itm_source=wikibanner) Join now        (/money) Money     Why so many families are “drowning in toys” America is in toy overload, and it might just be ruining fun.    by (/authors/anna-north) Anna North    Nov 18, 2024, 1:00 PM UTC   Share     Gift                            (JoeySendaydiego_Vox_Toys)  (JoeySendaydiego_Vox_Toys)      Joey Sendaydiego/Vox         (/even-better/385260/holiday-season-spending-money-pressure-hosting-guide) Part Of How to get through the holidays without going broke see all      (/authors/anna-north) (Anna North)   (/authors/anna-north) Anna North is a senior correspondent for Vox, where she covers American family life, work, and education. Previously, she was an editor and writer at the New York Times. She is also the author of four novels, including the forthcoming Bog Queen, which you can (https://geni.us/bogqueen) preorder here .      This story originally appeared in  (/family/369020/kids-children-generation-alpha-gen-school) Kids Today   , Vox’s newsletter about kids, for everyone.  (/pages/kids-today-newsletter-policy-childhood-policy-culture) Sign up here for future editions   .   Lynne Randall doesn’t buy all the toys that show up at her house. They just kind of happen.  There’s the play kitchen her 3-year-old son inherited from his cousins. There’s the “random stuff” her mother-in-law buys online, all of it plastic and made up of countless tiny pieces. There’s the kid-sized workbench — Randall got that from her local (/the-goods/21427525/buy-nothing-gifting-facebook-groups-community-money-borrow-lend-trade) Buy Nothing group , where neighbors can offload used items (and pick up more).  The sheer volume of stuff her son has to play with is overwhelming, Randall told Vox. The day we talked, she and her family were having guests at their Pacific Northwest home, so she was attempting to declutter, “finding all the parts and putting food in the toy kitchen and putting the tools in the workbench.” But it was always a losing battle.   Shelves overflowing with cars and blocks and action figures can be just as stressful for kids as they are for parents.   It’s a familiar refrain among parents: One reader told Vox recently that her family was “absolutely drowning in toys.” And while adults have been complaining about kids’ junk for generations (please see my father’s fruitless search for my brother’s one-inch-long toy wrench in Los Angeles International Airport circa 1992), many millennial and Gen X parents have the sense that something is different now — that kids have more toys than in past decades, and that they seem to arrive in ways Randall describes as “unintentional.”  Historical data on the average number of toys per kid is surprisingly hard to come by, but there is evidence that Americans’ toy glut is increasing — and it’s not just a problem for affluent households.  US toy sales jumped from $22.3     Become a Vox member to continue reading.    More In How to get through the holidays without going broke (/even-better/385260/holiday-season-spending-money-pressure-hosting-guide) See all        (Holiday travel can break the bank. 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Partner Content From This advertising content was produced in collaboration between Vox Creative and our advertiser, without involvement from Vox Media editorial staff.  (/) (Amazon Ads logo) (Amazon Ads logo)        Amazon Ads unveils new ways for brands to scale their full funnel impact The second annual Immersion Day event was filled with actionable insights and real-world examples for marketers.   by (/authors/jon-lafayette) Jon Lafayette     Oct 15, 2025, 1:57 PM UTC      (AmazonAds_CulverCity_Day2_Photos-14)  (AmazonAds_CulverCity_Day2_Photos-14)      Courtesy of Amazon Ads     Share     Gift               Courtesy of Amazon Ads    Share     Gift                  At a conference built for marketing decision-makers rethinking how media works across the funnel, Amazon Ads sought to educate and inspire attendees on how to unlock the full value of its solutions.  The two-day Amazon Ads Immersion Day event in Culver City, California, brought senior media leaders together to learn actionable insights, receive real-world examples, and get direct access to the people and products that help power Amazon Ads. Topics covered included their expanding portfolio of sports, growing array of artificial-intelligence capabilities, and case studies of successful customer campaigns.  Show Full Story   Attendees were also treated to a rousing keynote address from Jay Shetty — the New York Times bestselling author, storyteller, and chief purpose officer at Calm — who talked about the importance of purpose in connecting brands with consumers. The event was more than just programming, too: Each day ended with Immersion Fest, an outdoor experience with food, cocktails, live entertainment, and the chance to network with peers and industry partners.  “The best advertising doesn’t just reach people — it resonates,” said Tanner Elton, VP of U.S. Ad Sales at Amazon Ads. “It makes someone feel something. Do something. Believe something.” In the sessions that followed, Amazon Ads showed how its reach and resonance is driving impact everywhere. Here are some of the ways Amazon Ads solutions are driving full-funnel advertising at scale.  Measurement    Measurement has become a big opportunity for marketers who are running omnichannel campaigns in which ads run on multiple channels and devices. They want to gauge how each part of the campaign contributes to reaching consumers and generating sales. For many companies, omnichannel measurement can be challenging, but Amazon Ads has unique assets that can tie media exposure to purchase behavior like few others in the industry.  Amazon Ads measures omnichannel campaigns through a combination of receipt-based purchasing signals as well as first-party and third-party consumer panels to measure offline sales impact. These insights enable advertisers to quantify the total reach and return they’re getting for their media dollars, explained Mir Zaman, VP of eCommerce at Spectrum Brands. For example, he shared with the Immersion Day audience that a campaign for Spectrum’s weed and grass killer products generated a return above their benchmarks.  An Amazon Ads beta test also showed the effectiveness of Amazon DSP ads off of the Amazon store: In those results, 53 percent of home improvement shoppers exposed to Amazon DSP campaigns completed a purchase beyond Amazon; for grocery brands, 73 percent made off-Amazon purchases. As Zaman hinted at, that sort of detailed report helps advertisers select the most successful strategies and tactics and justify future spending.    Ad Tech    Ad tech is enabling decisions to be made faster and more accurately because many different inputs can be analyzed and incorporated into campaign planning. It’s making more detailed marketing intelligence available to companies of all sizes and enabling them to create, tailor, and scale successful campaigns.  One major innovation from Amazon Ads is the (https://advertising.amazon.com/library/news/amazon-ads-netflix-programmatic-buying#:~:text=Our%20goal%20is%20to%20remove,more%20about%20the%20Amazon%20DSP.) announcement shortly after Immersion Day that it has struck a deal with Netflix to give its advertisers direct access to the streamer’s premium ad inventory. Combined with its existing partnerships, Amazon Ads can now deliver relevant commercials in Disney, Hulu, and Netflix programming, in addition to inventory on Prime Video and Amazon.com, all in one ad-tech service — Amazon DSP.  Amazon DSP also helps advertisers follow shifting viewing patterns with omnichannel campaigns. It does that with a focus on transparency and cost efficiency, AI-powered optimization for relevant impressions, and deep consumer knowledge from Amazon Marketing Cloud, which provides advertisers with analytics and the ability to build audiences from pseudonymized signals from Amazon Ads as well as their own insights.  Artificial Intelligence    AI is transforming business by automating tasks, speeding up processes, and enabling deeper analysis of signals. Amazon Ads uses AI and machine learning to combine elements of branding, performance marketing, and online retail, enabling advertisers to shift spending to the highest performing channels from less effective ones and deliver better outcomes.  Amazon Ads AI solutions start with Brand+ and Performance+. Each uses deep neural networks to analyze billions of ad signals to reach the right customer for brands. Brand+ is designed for prospecting, reaching potential customers who are likely to engage with a brand in the future. Performance+, meanwhile, is about driving immediate results. It finds new customers who behave like a brand’s existing consumers and strengthens relationships with people who’ve already shown interest in a brand.  Using these solutions, insurance companies have cut their cost-per-quote in half, and 80 percent of the brands using these solutions have hit their cost-per-acquisition goals, according to insights shared during Immersion Day. Most importantly, the solutions eliminate about 70 steps in the campaign setup process.    Another AI solution — Ad Relevance — helps predict which impressions are most likely to drive results. Ad Relevance has been shown to improve cost-per-click efficiency by 9 percent, lower cost-per-thousand impressions by 34 percent, and generate 65 percent greater reach across premium supply.  For Prime Video, Amazon Ads is also developing artificial intelligence that picks up on scene-level contextual signals in real time. In addition to letting advertisers reach viewers during a moment in a show or movie that is relevant to their brand, the AI dynamically generates a pause ad based on what’s happening in that scene. So imagine you’re watching the Prime Video original series The Summer I Turned Pretty , and you press pause during a scene when the characters are at a beach. A pause ad for a travel brand could pop up saying something like, “Start your summer story with daily flights to endless beach days.”  Prime Video    Two aspects of ad campaigns can’t be overlooked: having the right message, and delivering it within content that attracts engaged viewers at scale. And there is perhaps no content more valuable for attracting large, engaged audiences right now than live sports.  Amazon Prime Video has been adding live sports to its portfolio of premium programming since it launched Thursday Night Football  with the NFL in 2022; it’s since added NASCAR to its sports lineup and is launching NBA telecasts this fall. Prime Video also (https://www.espn.com/golf/story/_/id/46280974/amazon-prime-video-joins-masters-coverage-first-second-round) just announced it will stream first and second round coverage of The Masters starting next year.    Prime is also the exclusive NBA and WNBA League Pass partner, giving Amazon advertisers more opportunities to engage with the younger audiences consuming NBA games. Now, Prime Sports viewers spend 3.1 times more in the Amazon store than those who don’t watch Prime Sports.  Sports advertisers can enhance their campaigns with interactivity and audience-based creative, in addition to Amazon Ads remarketing capabilities. One example shared during Immersion Day was Mobil 1, who became the presenting sponsor of Prime’s Victory Lane  post-NASCAR race coverage during the 2024-25 season. Working with Amazon Ads, Mobil 1 employed shoppable ad formats, had a bespoke storefront within the Amazon store, and used Amazon Ads user insights to re-engage viewers throughout the NASCAR season. The campaign produced a significant lift in sales and took consumers from brand awareness to product discovery almost immediately, according to Ryan Allen, head of brand marketing at Mobil 1 North America.  On TNF , brands using interactive video ads saw a 28 percent higher purchase rate compared to non-interactive ads. When combined with audience-based creative, brands saw a 35 percent increase in ad engagement compared to when they only used interactive ads. Additionally, Amazon Marketing Cloud provides insights including reach metrics, audience personas, new-to-brand rates, add-to-cart rates, and purchase rates for advertisers who buy commercials and clients who invest in in-game sponsorships, including billboards in TNF .  With its tech and insights, Amazon Ads helps marketers build smarter campaigns so they show up where it counts, whether that’s in a live game, a streaming moment, or while making a shopping decision.  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