Why We Are Focused on Amazon Advertising

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Last month, Fortune reported that Amazon is rapidly becoming one of the world’s largest ad networks, with over $2 billion USD in advertising revenues in Q2 2018 alone.  Their rapid appearance on the world advertising stage is only one of the reasons that we’ve been putting our sights on Amazon for some time now.  Here are our three main reasons to be all about Amazon:

1. Amazon Has Something for Everyone.

In the past, Amazon advertising has largely been focused on on-site internal advertising on Amazon.com.  Amazon has long been a go-to source for feed-based promoted product advertising. This type of internal Amazon advertising has been great for retailers and manufacturers looking to build Amazon as a channel partner. It is also highly effective as long as you watch the math as Amazon charges both for the advertising as well as their platform fees for each sale. Recently, however, Amazon has matured their offerings with the rollout of Amazon DSP to a wider audience.  I’ll speak more about Amazon DSP below, but one strength compared to other Amazon offerings is that you don’t have to sell on Amazon to use Amazon DSP.  In fact, all kinds of companies selling products, services and more are using Amazon DSP, Amazon’s programmatic solution, to profitably acquire customers from advertising delivered in programmatic exchanges across the Internet.

2. Amazon is Investing in Their Platforms

There is nothing like a few billion in revenue to attract resources, and Amazon is no exception.  Amazon is in the midst of a significant platform consolidation. Amazon’s previously disparate solutions for products, manufacturer solutions, and programmatic, and that encompass display, product, video, and store advertising have been combined into a single-login platform. This makes it far easier to know about potential offerings, to leverage knowledge across offerings, and to track and report on Amazon Advertising as a whole (well, maybe someday) We’re quickly on the road to agencies and advertisers taking full advantage of Amazon as a professionally executed network alongside Google and Facebook. This is still in the very early stages, but with hints that other Amazon platforms like Twitch advertising might follow, we are bullish.  For example, billing solutions are not yet integrated across offerings but we hope that the recent addition of single sign-on is a sign that further integration is to come.

3. Amazon DSP is Unique (as a DMP)

Programmatic is evolving faster than any other segment of Digital Marketing.  We have largely moved from the main trend being web publisher migration to exchanges. While this is mature in display, migration to programmatic it is still in early stages in traditional media like TV. Some of the newer programmatic trends involve access to data through DMP (Data Management Platform) integration in the advertiser DSP (Demand Side Platform). This and the use of AI are on the cutting edge of developments we are seeing in programmatic.  Amazon DSP (formerly Amazon AAP in a long line of product name changes) utilizes Amazon’s massive warehouse of customer demographic, product interest, and shopping data to inform targeting for ads delivered in other exchanges. Unique data for targeting is the currency of the new world of Digital Marketing. And since the abuse of social media data has curtailed targeting options in Facebook, Amazon has the ability to leverage tremendous personal data without violating the privacy protections of their users. We’re bullish on the data Amazon can bring to the table for advertising far outside of products sold on Amazon.com.

 

Amazon is changing the Digital Marketing landscape. Because of this we actively sought partnership as a firm capable of in-house programmatic management of all the Amazon platforms including Amazon DSP. We’ve invested in external and internal tools to bridge gaps in Amazon’s still-evolving reporting and to bring our deep financial optimization to Amazon’s advertising products. We’re excited about these opportunities and fully expect that Amazon advertising will be our biggest single growth network in 2019.

7 Easy Steps to Improve Your Retargeting

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Here are seven quick adjustments you can make to take your retargeting program from “Yuck!” to “Yay!” (Listen up all of you who just use default settings and one giant bucket of targeted visitors, and don’t skip the last point below.)

1) Frequency Caps

Overexposure to ads can quickly annoy visitors and result in decreased campaign performance. Limit the number of times a tagged visitor is exposed to your ad. Understand your sales cycle and take into account how frequently you want visitors to see your ad within that time frame.

2) Audience Segmentation

Visitors arrive with different goals and needs. Are they a customer? A prospect? What content have they viewed, and how does that help define their needs? Target messaging in ads to different stages of the funnel. Keep ads relevant to the audience segment.

3) Use One Provider (to start)

Many retargeting providers, such as Google AdWords, AdRoll, Steelhouse, and Perfect Audience have a high level of overlap in their publisher network.  Use one out of the gate to avoid dilution, then add unique publisher networks as your program grows and becomes more sophisticated.  Start with a network that provides a broad reach and good feature support, such as frequency capping.

4) A/B Testing

As with all aspects of digital marketing, retargeting offers a fantastic opportunity to improve your engagement numbers through ad testing.  Ideally, optimize to increased conversions.

 5) Use Targeting Options

Many retargeting networks offer sophisticated add on targeting for geography, context, demographics, or more. If these help you better focus your retargeting spend on the audience that will most likely bring you value, you should be using them.

6) Switch Up Messaging

Many marketers reiterate messaging in their retargeting ads.  But retargeted ads are also an opportunity to say something different.  Perhaps the reason the prospect didn’t convert in the first place was that the key piece of your value proposition for that person was missing in their experience on the site.  A/B testing different ads that have different value propositions is a powerful one-two punch, and a path to success.

7) Evaluate Correctly

Repeat after me: “Retargeting is not a Channel”.  Unlike other media, retargeting only works as an add-on cost that pays for itself by increasing conversion rate.  Without your other channels, retargeting cannot exist.  Yet companies still commonly report on retargeting performance with channel-based metrics, such as a unique cost-per-action.  The right metric is cost-per-assist, and this can only be evaluated in terms of overall cost of acquisition and conversion rate. Thinking clearly about how to evaluate retargeting is key to success, as the increased use of retargeting is quickly increasing the cost and competition in the display networks.

Retargeting is quickly moving through its awkward adolescence as marketers begin to understand user behavior and find tactics that work for them.  Keep trying new ideas and you too will find that retargeting becomes a key piece of your digital marketing program.

Display & Search: 5 Things that Make them Better Together

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Marketers engaged in Search often overlook the opportunities in Display advertising, but with total Display ad spend set to surpass Search in 2016, it’s time for advertisers to take a hard look at Display.

The ugly truth is that advertisers who are used to Search often fail at Display.  Let’s chat a bit about the strengths and differences between Search and Display:

1. Immediate Need vs. Education – Search has been the go-to media for direct response campaigns because you can respond to  a clearly expressed need.  When users tell you what they want, it’s easy to tailor the message and the engagement path.  But Search is limited to those that both know what they want and are taking active steps to find it.  Display, on the other hand, offers the opportunity to get beyond the late-stage buyer.  By educating and engaging a broader market, Display can help grow your overall market opportunity.

2. Linear Engagement vs. Cross-Channel – Search-savvy advertisers often fail at Display because they apply the same tools and metrics to Display that work for Search.  The user path is completely different with Display than Search, however.  With Search, it is not uncommon for over 90% of users to click on an ad and then engage.  This linear behavior has lead to the explosion of analytic-driven marketing programs. With Display, though, the numbers may be reversed, with 70-90% of the users that engage doing so without ever clicking on an ad.  Click-to-engagement metrics can lead to Display being undervalued by a huge factor.  Luckily, more advanced approaches to understanding cause and effect are bringing Display back, as advertisers learn to take advantage of how users actually behave.

3. Create Demand – Advertisers that still use last-click attribution love their Brand traffic, but often don’t think about the drivers behind it.  Display engagement often happens through a follow-on Brand search, meaning Display can be a very strong driver of both brand awareness and brand engagement. (Pro-tip: Utilize Display ad messaging in Brand Search ads for seamless engagement.)

4. Accelerated Home-Page Testing – Companies addicted to split testing tend to focus on purpose-specific landing pages, often because targeted Search campaigns can benefit from them. With Display, more focus is placed on the home page (because of the high levels of engagement without a click) creating a bigger audience for testing.  As a result, tests can run faster, creating a conversion win for all marketing programs that drive traffic to the home page.

5. The Display + Search One, Two Punch – With Display campaigns creating demand, and Search campaigns capturing demand, the combined Display + Search approach creates a powerful combination for growth.  As we emerge from the channel-centric world into one that embraces multi-channel, multi-device behavior, this alignment creates tremendous value when executed correctly.