The Forbes Content & Design Studio conducted an interview with Tanner Elton, VP of US Advertising Sales at Amazon Ads, who joined the company in 2012. The following excerpts from that interview have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Navigating the maze to reach audiences remains challenging for advertisers in a siloed media landscape. Meanwhile, customer decision fatigue is real with more choices than ever when searching for a new TV show or movie-night pick. Amazon’s growing entertainment universe—offering award-winning television, movies and live sports plus services such as Twitch, IMDb and Wondery—is emerging as a destination for consumers to discover content and for advertisers to integrate meaningfully. Prime Video ads’ recent launch is now giving brands more compelling ways to connect with customers on one of the largest premium ad-supported streaming services to scale their global reach.
A customer-obsessed approach is key for resilience and capturing consumer attention in this evolving era. With that strategy in mind, here are four ways brands can continue to captivate their audiences through innovative marketing.
Keep Consumer Needs At The Forefront Of Decision Making
In a multi-channel, cross-device world, brands have to pay attention to how, where and why customers are consuming media at any given moment. This means thinking about your customer’s mindset.
What mindset are you in when you sit down to unwind and find something to stream? What about when you realize you’re out of milk and your kids expect cereal for breakfast? Both scenarios offer advertisers a compelling moment to introduce customers to new brands—and potentially save the day.
For example, Purina ran an engaging campaign inspired by customers’ desires to interact with their pets and devices. They created a disco song for pet owners to dance to with their furry friends that plays through a branded experience with Alexa. Through ads running on the ad-supported version of Amazon Music, the song received millions of impressions and contributed to a significant lift in new-to-brand purchases in the first three months.
Leverage Powerful Insights To Deliver Customized Experiences
Measuring the impact of your advertising is critical, and Amazon Ads ensures brands and agencies have the insights needed to make their budgets count across all channels and at every stage of the marketing funnel.
Amazon Ads enables advertisers to leverage holistic, first-party insights to deliver creative to customized, segmented audiences based on geographic, demographic and behavioral signals. That means an automotive brand can run a sports car ad to a young-adult segment; an SUV spot to a sports and outdoors segment; and an overarching brand spot to all other Thursday Night Football viewers—all simultaneously during the same 30-second window.
We’ve seen advertisers meaningfully improve their measurement capabilities through Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC), our clean room solution where advertisers can easily perform analytics across pseudonymized signals. One global beauty brand learned that its messaging became less effective after customers saw their ad four times. By shifting their strategy, the brand increased return on ad spend by more than 50% in the first month. We’re also continuously innovating with new measurement techniques, including the Amazon Shopper Panel and Brand Lift studies, which help advertisers better understand their impact.
Use Emerging Tech To Increase Efficiency And Brand Engagement
While many facets of ad campaigns have benefited from AI optimization, creative has remained a complex brand challenge.
Amazon Ads found that nearly 75% of advertisers cite building ad creative and choosing a creative format as the biggest barriers to launching their campaigns. With generative AI, we’re on the brink of transformation. The tech is allowing advertisers to quickly and easily create visuals that capture attention as well as text and audio that communicate the benefits of products or services.
Amazon Ads recently launched an image generation solution designed to help reduce or remove creative barriers, enabling brands to produce lifestyle imagery with powerful tech. With just a few simple prompts, you can gather the assets required to build a campaign, test and optimize creative affordably and create tailored ad experiences at scale. In other words, generative AI democratizes creative for brands of all sizes.
Harness Interactivity And Seamless Solutions To Create Memorable Interactions
Interactive advertising transforms brand and consumer relationships into a meaningful and collaborative exchange. Amazon Ads helps advertisers spark conversations with consumers, including interactive calls to action—such as “Add To Cart” and “Get Email”—directly within Streaming TV ads. Rewarded Ads, on the other hand, are a creative enhancement that lets brands offer consumers special incentives in return for taking specific actions.
With the introduction of advertising into the Prime Video subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) service, advertisers have a new solution to align with premium content. Brands can now deliver more relevant advertising experiences to Prime Video’s global audience by combining award-winning TV shows and movies with robust first-party audience insights based on buying, browsing and streaming signals. While ads are new to Prime Video, Amazon is not new to ads. Advertisers can rely on Amazon Ads’ built-in suite of measurement tools to tie campaign performance back to business outcomes and prove impact.
With fresh seasons of The Rings of Power, Reacher and The Boys, and new Amazon Originals like Mr. & Mrs. Smith and Fallout, there could not be a better time for advertisers to reach viewers at scale with Prime Video ads.
