Amazon Ads announces new tools to launch campaigns, create video

Rewarded Sponsored Display

With this feature, an Amazon shopping credit can be added to a display ad that appears on Amazon's marketplace. In turn, customers receive the reward by clicking and purchasing the product. According to Amazon, 92% of respondents to an in-house survey said they were more likely to take an action if offered an Amazon shopping credit. Amazon already makes this available on Twitch and Fire TV. This feature is coming soon to the US in closed beta.

Sponsored Display for brands that don't sell on Amazon

Brands that sell products or services that aren't available on Amazon will now be able to run Sponsored Display ads on the site. It's a shift from only allowing brands that sell on Amazon to advertise, and opens up advertising to businesses that don't sell goods directly, like restaurants or hotels. This feature is currently available to US advertisers in closed beta on Twitch.

Video creative tools

• Sponsored Display video creative: Amazon is making a new tool generally available that is designed to help smaller brands easily create video ads, and measure performance. Examples of video ads include tutorials, demos, unboxing and testimonials.
• Video Builder: This allows brands to create videos for Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display campaigns. It provides access to customizable templates, as well as product and lifestyle images. Amazon said the videos can be built in 10 minutes.
• Amazon creative services: This helps advertisers discover, compare and book with service providers for the creation of Sponsored Brands, Streaming TV, and Sponsored Display videos, as well as other creative assets.

Digital Signage Ads in Amazon DSP

A wider variety of in-store ads is coming to Amazon Fresh stores, which is the company's growing network of brick-and-mortar grocery markets. This update allows the ad space to be sold on the digital ad marketplace. Through this new tool, brands will be able to purchase ads programatically that will appear in Amazon Fresh stores. Campaigns can be scheduled based on store location, daypart or location of a sign within a store. This will be available to eligible US advertisers in November through managed service.

Sponsored Products campaigns with presets

Amazon wants to provide presets that will allow advertisers to quickly launch Sponsored Products campaigns, which are CPC ads that promote individual product listings in search results. Through this release, ready-to-launch campaigns will be available in Amazon's ads console, with daily budgets and bidding strategies already set.

Performance recommendations

This feature allows users to apply best practices for Sponsored Products campaigns that are identified by Amazon. The recommendations are designed to "work in the background," and identify areas to improve as they arise. Then, changes can be made by advertisers with a single click, Amazon said. This feature will be generally available in 10 countries in November.

Streaming TV

Amazon is adding post-campaign reporting so advertisers will have data on the incremental audience that was reached through Amazon streaming ad campaigns, beyond their linear TV campaigns. The feature combines first-party and third-party signals, and is augmented by machine leaning-based-projections. Amazon said the reporting is "in-flight," so optimizations can be made during campaigns.

Amazon Marketing Cloud

Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) is the company's clean room solution, which provides aggregated, anonymized data so that advertisers can perform analytics on first-party signals from Amazon Ads, as well as their own first-party data. Amazon announced the following upgrades for AMC:

Signal coverage: AMC will now include Sponsored Display and digital subscription events among the data that can be analyzed. An integration with Sizmek Ad Suite, currently in beta, allows advertisers to build queries to analyze bidding efficacy, cross-publisher attribution and total reach. Sponsored Brands signals will also be added in 2023.

Instructional Queries within Amazon's library have grown from 10 to 50 in the last year. These function as playbooks to help advertisers get started with AMC.

Insights: AMC is adding the ability to manage Amazon DSP audiences later this year. "This will enable audience creation via an SQL statement, allowing for increased customization based on campaign goals and the ease of pushing these audiences directly into Amazon DSP for campaign activation," Amazon said.

Partner programs: Amazon has rolled out partner certifications for agencies, tool providers, system integrators and software vendors. These partners are part of the Amazon Ads Partner Network, and included in a directory that is designed to make them easy to find.

Expanded targeting for Sponsored Products

This allows advertisers to automatically target products that are similar to their preferred products. Expanded products are updated dynamically. This is available through the advertising console and Amazon Ads API.

Amazon offered the following example: "If the individual product target is a coffee maker, enabling expanded targeting may include targeting of substitute products like other coffee makers, complementary products like coffee filters or coffee beans, and other items that are frequently viewed and purchased along with the coffee maker."

Shoppers often seek out these items together. Now targeting on Amazon will account for that.

Omichannel metrics for CPG and grocery

It allows advertisers to measure the "aggregated, total impact of their ad tactics on shopping activities on and off Amazon while campaigns are still mid-flight," Amazon said. It is designed to stretch across the full funnel, and has reporting that shows the relationships between ad audiences, placements and creatives on outcomes, Amazon said. These metrics can be accessed on-demand in the Amazon DSP. This feature is moving into general availability for CPG and grocery customers in the US.