Sleeping Advertisers Wake to Amazon’s Giant Opportunities

Bleary-eyed advertisers who’ve hit the snooze button on the Amazon Advertising Platform (AAP) are waking to find it’s time to get caffeinated and catch up on overlooked opportunities.

The company that brings life’s wants and needs directly to 183 million consumers’ doors monthly knows more about their buying habits than Google or Facebook. While Google understands what users are looking for and Facebook knows (probably more than we want it to) about interests and likes, it’s Amazon that knows who is buying what, when and for how much.

Using predictive data from past purchases and real-time shopping insight, AAP serves up arguably the most relevant advertising at the time of decision. This puts advertising across Amazon’s owned-and-operated sites and apps at the bottom of the funnel.

CPG brands, like P&G and Unilever, have been among the first in line to include AAP in their brand and performance marketing strategies. Mega agencies Omnicom Group, Publicis and WPP plan to crank up their ad spend on Amazon between 40 and 100 percent this year, according to the Wall Street Journal. This will come, in part, at the expense of budgets previously tagged for Google and Facebook. So serious about AAP opportunities are ad agencies that WPP opened a Seattle office last year specifically to focus on Amazon, and it bought an Amazon consultancy for good measure.

Amazon advertising isn’t just an e-commerce play either. Brands without tangible products, like Progressive Insurance and Wells Fargo, are placing with the AAP. Other service categories, like moving companies, healthcare and travel, can make big inroads here, if they focus their brand strategy correctly.

Advertising options are plentiful across the sites, which include IMDb and Amazon Prime Video, as well as third-party exchanges. By 2022, Forbes reports that Amazon Prime Video subscriptions will reach 56 million domestically, providing solid audience numbers. While future advertising opportunities for Alexa on Echo have been under wraps, advertisers are taking advantage of ads on skills, like radio or podcasts.

Currently, options across Amazon sites include sponsored product ads, headline search ads, product display ads, out-stream and in-stream videos and sponsored content. Amazon is reportedly working with third-party mobile ad companies for video opportunities outside its own network. Offline opportunities are out there, too.

Targeting on AAP

According to Digiday, AAP targeting includes:

• Behavioral (lifestyle, in-market)
• Contextual (product category)
• Lookalike (pixel-based, anonymous customer match, Amazon first-party data)
• Remarketing (pixel-based, anonymous customer match)
• Demographic/geographic

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