1. Amazon Live 

Recently announced, non-endemic clients can now use Amazon Live to launch new offerings and answer questions in real time. In 2023, the vertical view format in Amazon Live will become available for eligible advertisers. 

2. Sponsored Products: performance recommendations 

New performance recommendations, which are in-console, actionable best practices, were unveiled and are now available in ten countries. By troubleshooting in the background, advertisers can utilize these tailored recommendations to boost Sponsored Products ad campaign performance. 

3. Sponsored Products: campaign presets

Advertisers will now be able to create Sponsored Products campaigns with recently launched preset campaign settings, which include the following: 

• Daily budget 
• Bidding strategy
• Targeting strategy
• Associated bids 

These pre-populated campaign settings are based on historical performance and will be pulled to provide advertisers with estimated performance data, including impressions, clicks and conversions. According to Amazon, campaigns launched with presets observed positive results, including a 77% increase in clicks and a 29% increase in conversions.

Combined with expert knowledge, this feature can assist in selecting the right ASINs to run paid advertising. It's important to note that while advertising drives the most highly qualified traffic, your brand needs to be retail-ready to drive conversion and achieve the results you want. 

4. Sponsored Display: Twitch and non-endemic businesses

For non-endemic businesses in verticals not available on Amazon (e.g., restaurants and gyms), US advisers can run Sponsored Display ad campaigns to connect with audiences on Twitch. These campaigns are focused on driving outcomes and improving business performance on the Amazon platform, confirming Amazon's opportunities beyond its own ecosystem. SVP of Ecommerce John Ghiorso talks more about it here. 

While Sponsored Display ads already appear on the Twitch browse tab and directory page, they will now be integrated with Twitch live streams, which bring in 30 million daily visitors on average.

5. Rewarded Sponsored Display 

To incentivize further shoppers, shopping/streaming credits can be added to Streaming TV, Display, and Video campaigns. Brands can add an Amazon credit directly to Sponsored Display creatives, which shoppers can redeem by clicking on the ad and purchasing the advertised product. This will come in closed beta for US advertisers soon. 

To demonstrate the value and utility of this type of experience, a 2021 Amazon Ads survey of US adult Amazon shoppers showed that 92% of respondents are more likely to take action if offered an Amazon shopping credit.

6. Sponsored Display: Brand Store traffic 

To drive traffic and brand growth on the Amazon platform, advertisers can now use their video ads to redirect shoppers to the Brand Stores with Sponsored Brands video creatives. This new feature introduces a broader product catalog and increases engagement with shoppers without distractions from competing offers. 

7. Sponsored Display: video creative enhancements 

New video capabilities to enhance Sponsored Display’s creative allows advertisers to showcase products and the brand through immersive storytelling such as tutorials, demos, unboxing and testimonials. This means advertisers using Sponsored Display audiences can build awareness on and off Amazon with 45-second videos and link shoppers directly to the product detail page for further purchase consideration. 

It was also recently announced that non-endemic advisers will soon be able to run Sponsored Display ad campaigns focused on driving outcomes and improving positioning on Amazon O&O. 

For smaller brands with limited creative capabilities, a new beta Video Builder tool provides customizable templates to create ad campaigns in under ten minutes. Video ads can appear above the SRP for Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display campaigns. As advertisers, it's still vital to keep in mind the importance of organic placement and avoid being a pay-to-play brand on Amazon.  

According to third-party research from Wyzowl, 73% of consumers say they prefer video ads to learn about products and services, and 88% say video ads have convinced them to buy.

8. Amazon Demand-Side-Platform (DSP): performance enhancements 

Campaign improvements have been made to decrease setup time to 15 minutes, optimizing efficiency and productivity. A few notable changes include: 

• Addition of a "Change History" feature to track campaign changes and impact on performance 
• Updated algorithm to include "keep learning" and ingest more signals that result in better outcomes 
• Amazon Ad Tag is moving from IMG to JS, which will enable 1 pixel for all events that are being tracked and drive richer insights with no requirements of third-party identifiers.
• Amazon Audiences are automatically updated to improve signals beyond third-party identifiers
• Contextual Targeting (beta) based on Amazon's retail taxonomy and in-the-moment content consumption with 40K categories available 
• Amazon Brand Lift is now available for UK advertisers in Amazon DSP 

These changes show that Amazon DSP's extensive targeting capabilities will continue to evolve, allowing advertisers to dial in on what's working and what's not. 

9. Digital Signage Ads

Starting in November 2022, eligible advertisers can programmatically purchase ad space in Amazon Fresh stores by utilizing the new inventory opportunity within Amazon DSP. With these Digital Signage Ads programmatically placed in Amazon's stores, customers will see more relevant ads and have the opportunity to physically engage with brands. Brands and advertisers can customize ad placements, daypart and measure performance for meaningful results, which allows for efficient optimization and improved customer experience.

At unBoxed 2022, Amazon shared that Digital Signage Ads within Amazon Fresh stores resulted in a 40% sales lift for Kraft.

10. Streaming TV Ads

Along with Thursday Night Football, streaming TV ad placements during Premier League games are now available in the UK. Advertisers can also utilize incremental household reach, a post-campaign reporting solution, to measure incremental audience reached. By combining first-party and third-party signals, advertisers can ensure accurate, aggregated results augmented by machine learning-based projections.

11. Amazon Marketing Stream

Amazon Marketing Stream launched globally in October 2022, with the exception of India. By expanding to all countries within the Amazon Ads API, this new service delivers hourly campaign metrics to advertisers’ AWS accounts via a push-based model. It provides details such as targeting expression performance by placement and budget consumption messages. 

Advertisers can expect additional hourly Sponsored Display data to come soon, which can be used for further campaign optimization. Amazon goes on to say that brands can benefit from Amazon Marketing Stream in the following ways: 

• Optimize campaigns more effectively
• Respond quickly to campaign changes
• Improve operational efficiency 

12. Amazon Marketing Cloud 

Currently, Amazon advertisers can utilize ad signals of Sponsored Products and Amazon DSP media. With the recent addition of Sponsored Display signals in Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC), advertisers can dive deeper into cross-media attribution and better understand the customer journey. Along with the additional signals, companion instructional queries (IQs) were launched to guide advertisers on cross-media attribution, the overlap into Amazon DSP, and other common Sponsored Display analytics. 

Based on customer feedback, Amazon Ads has focused on building AMC capabilities across four areas: 

1. Signal coverage. Advertisers can now build queries to analyze bidding efficacy, cross-publisher attribution, and total reach through integration with Sizmek Ad Suite. These Sponsored Brands signals will be added in early 2023. 

This integration is valuable as it allows advertisers to measure the impact of non-Amazon media on Amazon conversions and achieve more comprehensive cross-channel attribution, further fine-tuning the planning strategy across each phase of the marketing funnel. 

Christina Bender, Director of Amazon Partnerships, noted, “If you use Amazon Attribution to measure the effectiveness of your non-Amazon media driving Amazon.com metrics, testing out Sizmek would be a natural next step to see how that data can be queried within AMC.”

2. Ease of use. Within the past year, AMC's Instructional Query library increased from 10 to more than 50 pre-built queries serving as advertising playbooks on AMC.  

3. Actionable insights. Brands will soon be able to manage their Amazon DSP audiences within AMC, enabling audience creation via an SQL statement. 

4. Partner programs. Ask us about your Amazon services!

Final thoughts from Amazon unBoxed

With the recent updates, Amazon has laid a landscape that brands can utilize for incremental business growth. A revenue increase in Q3 turned things around for Amazon, who reported total sales of $127 billion (a 15% increase compared to last year), and a 13% jump in ecommerce sales YoY.

That growth brings opportunities for brands to end the year on a strong note. Not keeping up with Amazon’s innovations may lead to missed opportunities in revenue, especially as it remains the go-to marketplace in the US. Through the power of storytelling and advertising, advertisers can showcase their brand story and products without the distractions of competitors or offers, on and off Amazon. 

There is a lot to unpack here, but our team is eager to explore these new rollouts with you! Reach out to an Amazon Ads Specialist today to game plan a winning strategy on the Amazon platform.

We all know the age-old adage that content is king, but when all marketers use the same strategy by leveraging content to promote their product or service, the question remains: does this strategy still work? With millions of options available and thousands of alternatives in place, what can make your brand stand out as the most memorable? The answer to both questions lie in context marketing, a crucial strategy for helping your content resonate with audiences—and one that has enjoyed renewed interest and attention due to recent conversations about privacy and cookieless marketing.

Cut through the noise and drive memorability for your brand.

Context marketing provides the right meaning and insights to maximize relevance between people and your brand. Too often, brands focus fully on the content of their creative and not enough on the context in which people view them—the channels, cultural trends and other variables that shape their behavior online. But modern marketers know that there’s often a need to strategically balance content and context depending on their marketing goals. When building a content or context marketing strategy, there are a few factors that brands and marketers can consider. 

Frequency. How frequently will users see the ads? Too high a frequency can lead to ad fatigue. But if the ad frequency is low due to your budget or if your audience pool is smaller, there will only be a few chances to make an impact at speed. When users decide within a matter of seconds where to devote their attention, context can at times take priority over content. In Uni’s rebrand, focusing on enriching lives by inspiring creativity and connection, our paid media team worked closely with the creative team to ensure the media strategy was in line with the campaign’s creative vision. This approach enabled us to capture audience attention quickly through creative.

Shifts in preferences and trends. Over time, trends and shifts in consumer attitude will ebb and flow. For example, a particular skincare product is not useful for me in summer due to my skin type, but I did find it to be good for winter. Unfortunately for the brand, they never targeted me in the off season, which makes me wonder how things would have turned out differently had they re-evaluated audience targeting over time. Because trends and needs change, it’s wise to continually test audience targeting and exclusions over time. This will help you strategically adapt your marketing plan, its content and its context to meet changing tastes and preferences throughout the year.

Channel and vertical. The channel determines the format of creative and the content that will be delivered to the audience. For example, some channels favor video content while others are focused on images. Some are good for longform content, while content on others is more snackable. Some might even be interactive. Keep in mind how the channel may influence audience expectations, and also consider how your vertical may guide the approach to content. 

This is a strategy we used in helping Hatch, a fast-growing wellness and health brand, win over the hearts of countless people hoping to improve their sleep. We built a constant flow of fit-for-format content bespoke for each channel, each with narrative arcs that told the deeper story of Hatch Restore, the brand’s latest sleep assistant. The focus on format returned a 220% increase in click-through rate and 120% increase in view-to-completion rates.

Target audience. When it comes to your audience, it’s important to achieve the desired sentiment. This starts by selecting the right audience. For Hill House, a lifestyle direct-to-consumer brand, we analyzed audience signals from previous buyers to identify current and would-be customers. These insights allowed us to build data-driven creative we could optimize for this audience. These efforts not only drive performance—Hill House saw 80% higher ad engagement—but also enhance brand recall.

Maximize your marketing efforts with context marketing.

The above factors, while not all inclusive, offer a way to begin tapping into audiences more effectively through context marketing. Context marketing lets you deliver the right ad, at the right time, with the right message and format. By testing your creative relative to the variables above—frequency, trends, channel and audience—you enhance personalization and boost the strength of your marketing. This is especially useful as brands seek new strategies to adapt to a cookieless, more privacy-focused marketing landscape.

Ad fatigue is real: with so much content out there demanding our attention, it’s all too easy for audiences to tune things out. When it comes to building memorable creative, a strategic mix of content and context is key. That said, how will you build your next marketing strategy?

Amazon Brand Stores offer customization and control.

Amazon sellers can build a strong customer connection through the brand store by sharing their stories and educating shoppers on the brand’s mission, values, and much more. There is no other place on Amazon where the customer experience is controlled. Competitors’ ads are not visible on the Brand Store, which allows for a more customizable experience that focuses on just the brand’s products and offerings. With the spotlight being purely on the brand, this feature is crucial to leverage compelling brand storytelling.

Set your Brand Store up for success.

Once an Amazon seller completes the Amazon Brand Registry, they’ll be able to create an Amazon Brand Store. It’s important to note that the Brand Store template should reflect the brand’s image. Amazon frequently releases new ideas for sellers to boost their revenue and customers’ loyalty, such as brand videos to show products in motion, interactive posts, and product comparison tables. By adding these components, sellers can emphasize how their products can solve the shoppers’ problems with lifestyle images and a brief brand story. 

The Brand Store should include an “About Us” section or page, which speaks on the brand’s story and competitive advantages. This allows them to establish a rapport with their shoppers and provide a more personable experience. 

Since ecommerce shoppers rely heavily on visuals to make important purchase decisions, Brand Store imagery should be a top priority for sellers. Images and videos should follow specific size requirements to avoid any store errors. Other best practices for images include showing a variety of high quality images and ordering them in a way that prioritizes the images in a specific sequence.

Successful Brand Stores should also have a user-friendly navigation menu, categorized in a way that matches the brand’s target audience needs. Since the Brand Store acts as a hub for customer browsing, I recommend all products are available and accessible through the Brand Store. 

Analyze and optimize every step of the customer journey.

Amazon Brand Stores should always be monitored and optimized based on the data and engagement. This includes updating active promotions as well as featuring new product launches and seasonal products. If the seller fails to keep the Brand Store updated, they risk losing sales and revenue. According to Amazon, on average Brand Stores updated within a 90-day window have 21% more repeat visitors and 35% higher attributed sales per visitor. With the goal of increasing sales and customer loyalty, sellers should focus on optimizing the Brand Store content to be as informative and relevant as possible. 

Last but not least, sellers are able to track their Brand Store performance and shoppers’ engagement. These metrics include but are not limited to daily visitors, page views, estimated total sales, and so much more. Reviewing these metrics can be beneficial for a seller who wants to use their Brand Store in conjunction with their other marketing efforts.

With Prime Day a few months away, brands must align budgeting tactics, promotional campaigns, and inventory levels to ensure a profitable shopping event.