We were fortunate enough to recently be invited to Amazon’s inaugural ad conference that was held in Seattle for roughly 400 of Amazon’s top brands and sellers. The event provided participants with case studies, technology previews, detailed workshops and a preview of what’s to come on Amazon’s rapidly evolving advertising platform.

A couple of themes emerged that provide a lens as to where Amazon wants to take the platform as well as how we can further leverage the platform:

The entire marketing funnel matters - Amazon has historically focused their advertising on the bottom of the “funnel” on the low hanging fruit where the final click leads to a sale. Every presentation and workshop focused on Amazon’s ability to create awareness and eventual sales at the top of the funnel. Amazon stressed their ability to serve branding via Kindle, Fire TV and even packaging. Amazon now provides a “new to brand” metric that highlights new customers shopping the brand.
The internet is a big place - Amazon hasn’t made buying advertising “off-Amazon” very easy for brands and sellers. Any interested brand was forced to go through an agency. Amazon is changing that with a system wide release of Demand-Side Platform (DSP) for all brands and sellers. This allows any interested brand the ability to purchase advertising on other sites outside of Amazon using retargeting or specific audiences.
Attribution is king - Historically Amazon has only sought to prove sales driven by marketing clicks on their own site. Now Amazon is looking to become a full blown attribution tool to better understand where sales are driven across non-Amazon channels.
The focus is on brands - Amazon is increasingly focused on building their equivalent of Alibaba’s Tmall stores. Amazon believes more and more brand experiences on their platform should include store within store concepts and even social posts.

So what does all this mean? Amazon isn’t slowing in the Advertising space as spread their wings to other ecommerce channels and build an offering that encompasses not only conversions to sales but also brand awareness. As the offerings expand, so to have the metrics to make this a platform no brand can avoid whether selling on Amazon or not.