July 26, 2023

Stratably hosted Joe Shelerud from Ad Advance to share insights on how to best use Amazon DSP off-site, an under-tapped option for marketers.

Key topics included:

1. Amazon DSP advantages
2. Tent pole strategies with DSP
3. Case study on Tru Niagen

Watch The Recording Here

Here’s what we found most interesting:

1. Reasons for low adoption: Leveraging offsite placements with Amazon DSP is under-adopted for several reasons. There’s a general knowledge gap inside organizations as they equate “Amazon DSP” with simply the retail site or a way to drive sales, while unaware of the content ecosystem it has built up and the upper funnel capabilities available beyond search results. In addition, it is challenging to compare Amazon DSP performance to alternative DSPs because of differing metrics, goals or even teams involved. For instance, a brand might want to drive new-to-brand shoppers with Amazon DSP (new to brand is a reportable metric from Amazon), but they can’t even see a comparable metric from alternative DSPs. This makes communicating internally about the pros/cons of different DSP options difficult.
2. Owned properties vs. open web: Offsite DSP can incorporate placing ads on the open web (weather.com, for instance) and on Amazon owned properties like IMDB. The latter guarantees a brand safe environment and actual websites, which is particularly attractive considering the recent study from ANA that found a great deal of waste with programmatic spend.
3. Getting started: For brands new to Amazon DSP that want to focus on awareness, it’s important to still use granular audiences. For instance, a running brand should be more inclined to focus on “marathon runners” rather than “runners” or individuals interested in outdoor activities. This more narrowed is still of sufficient size on Amazon and will help drive better performance.
4. Tent pole strategies: This involves developing awareness in the run up to the tentpole event via overlapping audience reports, then targeting shoppers that have engaged with your ads but not bought during the event, and finally, retargeting shoppers after the event with custom purchase audiences. Tentpoles can be anything from Prime Day to a homepage takeover to a high demand seasonal period.
5. The role for AMC: In the case study shared of Tru Niagen, AMC helped reveal new-to-brand customer journeys. These insights enable a quantified understanding of first touch and media overlap, particularly useful for upper funnel DSP campaigns, and more granular insights than what other display alternatives can offer. This more granular reporting is expected to attract more ad budget to Amazon and away from Google and Meta.

Three questions to consider following the live session:

1. Is our team managing alternative DSPs aware of the targeting/measurement capabilities on Amazon DSP?
2. Are we using AMC to measure the impact that we’re trying to achieve with our advertising?
3. Do we have a tent pole strategy around key periods/events or are we just ramping up activity during the event itself?