Amazon Unifies Ad Products With ‘Amazon Advertising’

Amazon recently announced it will be unifying its ad products (previously AMS, AMG, AAP) and bringing them into a central platform, ‘Amazon Advertising’. The Flaunt Digital team discuss the news in the latest episode of Industry Spotlight…

See below for a full video transcription.

VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION:

Chris: So it appears that Amazon have decided to follow in Google’s footsteps with unifying all their marketing platforms; in a similar fashion to what Google have done this year. So Google recently updated all their marketing platforms into one marketing suite, which is easier for everybody, I guess. They’ve retired the old DoubleClick, which has been around for a number of years now, and it has made things simpler. The whole integration, the whole Google stack visually looks a little bit more interesting, and they’ve added extra products in there as well, which is pretty cool.

So Amazon have basically followed suit, and they’ve retired the old Amazon Media Group offering, which was their own managed service that they used to do on behalf of agencies and advertisers. There was also the AMS platform, which was, like, your self-serve PPC stuff, and then the AAP. That’s the Amazon Advertising Platform, and that was, like, your programmatic solution through their DSP. So what they’ve done is they’ve unified the whole thing and they’ve just called it Amazon Advertising, which is pretty straightforward.

Lee: Catchy.

Jamie: It’s about time they’ve bombed off some acronyms.

Lee: There were a lot of acronyms. AMS, AMG, AAP.

Chris: Yeah, it was getting a little bit daft, in all honesty. And the different products that they offer for each of those solutions is just an absolute minefield. I think anybody who’s had any dealings with Amazon Marketing in the past will know the struggle of getting to know what kind of ads platform you should be using, and then, obviously, the ad placements that are available within that platform. So the solutions were just getting a little bit ridiculous, to be fair. So in a way, it’s great for advertisers and brands.

I think they’ll have to do quite a bit more education on how suited each of those strands are within that advertising platform, how they are suited to different brands and agencies. Because, no doubt, those brands and strands will still exist within there. It’s just how you, obviously, get access to them and what kind of criteria you need to fulfil to get on each of those.

I imagine they’ll still have a managed service, and their programmatic service, and then their smaller-tier stuff for the small advertisers. But yeah, all in all, seems like the right move. It doesn’t seem like a bad move after Google upgraded to their marketing platform as well. It seems like the correct way to go, in all honesty, in simplifying things.

Lee: Well, if they’re following suit and they want a piece of the ad-revenue field they’re going to have to update that.

Chris: Yeah. Well, I think another part of it is that, again, as soon as advertisers and agencies get comfortable with the current platform and they start to understand it. And, you know, it’s not as mystical, is it? It’s not, you know, they literally need Amazon customer services and people who deal with their product to help agencies. And obviously, I’m sure there’s plenty of ways of making money and margin within that. So I think they’ve had to make this shift, again, to make it, you know, extra mystical, if you like, and pique people’s interest as well.

I think it is another branding exercise, as well. People will be keen, like myself, now, to figure it out and have a go and see what additional features there are. Like I said, I think most of it, it’ll just be the changes to the interface. I very much doubt there will be any sort of difference in terms of cost or how you manage activity, all the type of creative and placements and formats that you’ll get access to.

Yeah. It’ll be interesting to see what happens with the costing system for this new DSP, basically. Demand-side platform, that is; where you’ll serve everything from. But yeah, I think it is a sensible move, as well, especially following in Google’s footsteps. I think that’ll be a good step for both Amazon and agencies.