Inside Amazon Ads’ quest to become a ‘crystal box’
“We want to be a great one-stop media buying shop for all of our advertisers. That includes not only our premium content but everyone else’s.”
Alan Moss, vice-president of global ad sales at Amazon Ads, sat down with The Media Leader during Cannes Lions last month to discuss how new partnerships have turned Amazon DSP into a substantial player in the connected TV (CTV) market.
In June, Amazon inked deals to integrate Disney’s Real-Time Ad Exchange (Drax) and Roku into Amazon DSP. The tie-ups give Amazon substantial scale. As Moss claimed, the retail and streaming giant now has the largest addressable, logged-in CTV base in the US, including 80% of CTV households.
“We can understand who’s watching what, plan your buys better, frequency-cap them,” he explained.
“You have the ability to get premium Disney content on Hulu, Disney+ [and] ESPN from the Amazon DSP, with the benefit of not only their strong signals, but our shopping signals and browsing signals as well.
“The more that you can offer that kind of value, the more you’re taking the guesswork out of advertising.”
Watch the full interview
Taking the guesswork out of advertising also requires transparency and Moss reaffirmed Amazon’s commitment to work with joint industry currencies in different markets to provide open and accurate measurement.
“We want to be a crystal box,” he said. “We want to be transparent about what we do and we know advertisers need to have that.”
Also key is simplifying CTV media buying and planning, especially as Amazon works to connect upper-funnel brand marketing efforts commonly associated with TV (including Prime Video) to lower-funnel data from Amazon’s retail offering.
By making TV a more full-funnel proposition, Moss expects more advertisers will ultimately be brought into the market, growing a pie that had become stagnant.
Following the interview, Lebbon told The Media Leader that what stood out to him in discussion with Moss is how Amazon “blends demand generation with lower-funnel activation”.
“Amazon is well-positioned to provide the kind of feedback and data marketing teams need to satisfy CEOs and chief financial officers increasingly hungry for clear return on investment,” he said, adding: “I still agree with Les Binet — we should work in probabilities, not absolutes — but the reality is that CFOs want guarantees and Amazon may be able to offer the kind of data they like.”