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It’s time to dig deeper into more of the new launches and innovative solutions from Amazon unBoxed 2023.

Yesterday I wrote about Amazon’s new AI image generator. Yes, that was the sexy reveal of the day, but Amazon wasn’t finished, not by a long shot. 

Sometimes it can feel like Amazon advertising is the center of the ecommerce universe. In many ways, that’s because it is. At the unBoxed 2023 conference, Amazon Ads announced a wide range of new capabilities that have given advertisers new tools and applications across ad campaign planning, activation, and measurement. 

Multi-Channel Selling Requires a Sophisticated Ad Platform 

With selling on Amazon increasingly becoming a multi-channel endeavor, maintaining consistency and transparency across parallel advertising efforts has become a trouble spot. 

At unBoxed 2023, it appears that Amazon is listening. 

“Advertisers tell us demonstrating the impact of their marketing is their biggest challenge, and that they are still having difficulty measuring performance across the customer journey. They need more actionable insights to reach current and potential customers at scale,” said Kelly MacLean, vice president of Amazon DSP.

Amazon Ads announced several complementary capabilities across multiple platforms including, Amazon DSP, Amazon Ads APIs, and Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC).

Amazon’s stated goal is to empower advertisers through more holistic audience insights; advanced campaign planning, activation, and optimization controls; and comprehensive measurement.

A New “Clean Room” Data Solution

Do you feel your eyes start to glaze over any time there’s talk of “cloud” computing? It’s hard enough to wrap your mind around an ad platform or operating system, let alone something that’s up in the cloud. 

In this case, it’s well worth stretching ourselves a little bit. As the deprecation of internet cookies closes in on third-party data, we’re all looking for new, relevant data sources to help inform our – expensive – advertising decisions. 

Amazon Cloud is a very big lever that sellers have been able to pull to find new ways to take advantage of audience targeting. 

The solution has to do with something called a “clean room.”

A data clean room is a digital space that allows for the collection (and study) of aggregated and anonymized user information. The clean room makes it possible to protect the user’s privacy, while letting advertisers target a specific demographic and make like-for-like comparisons. 

Amazon’s – just released – Publisher Cloud is the first and only clean room solution that enables a publisher to analyze its first-party signals with Amazon Ads insights to create deals optimized for reach. Amazon says that “publisher deals are made available for activation in Amazon DSP through a single, streamlined workflow.” 

This matters because now you’re better able to understand how contextual signals index against Amazon Ads audiences that are in-market for products, such as pet supplies or cookware. That way you can construct a specific deal to reach those niched-down shoppers . . . sitting in front of their televisions. 

Why Amazon’s New Sponsored TV Ad Solution Matters 

Also at unboxed, Amazon introduced Sponsored TV, a Streaming TV ad solution for brands of any size to connect with new customers in the most unthreatening place possible, their living rooms.

Amazon says that the ad solutions are “pre-packaged with retail aware, shoppable ad formats.” 

Sponsored TV allows marketers to buy Streaming TV with the same flexibility of Amazon Ads self-service ads — no minimum spend requirements or upfront commitments. With this launch, Amazon has revealed that campaigns will be optimized in real time, simplifying the complex process of buying programmatic TV ads.

Amazon advertisers can quickly get started with Streaming TV. There are no minimum spend requirements. Additionally, as mentioned above, access to Amazon’s first-party insights help brands reach engaged audiences that are already halfway to the Buy Box. 

More Amazon unBoxed Updates 

Amazon has been busy. Here are just a few of the additional updates that Amazon revealed over the past 24 hours. 

Strategic Campaign Planning

With multi-channel selling rapidly becoming the norm, Amazon’s recently updated cross-channel planner – part of a new media planning suite in Amazon DSP – provides important insights related to audiences and supply, across both Amazon and third-party sites and apps. 

Advertisers can drill down to study reach by channel then decide where to duplicate reach based on campaign performance and allocate campaign budgets correspondingly. 

Sponsored Products Campaigns for Premium Apps and Websites

At unBoxed 2023, Sponsored Products campaigns have been extended to premium apps and websites starting in the US, including Pinterest, BuzzFeed, Hearst Newspapers, Raptive, and Ziff Davis brands like Lifehacker and Mashable. 

Amazon says that the ads will “link to the Amazon product page, making it simple for customers to move from inspiration to browsing or buying, in just one or two clicks.”

Amazon DSP Goal-Based Bidding

Continuing to lean into their underutilized advertising format, demand side platform, or DSP, Amazon DSP has just launched goal-based bidding. Advertisers can specify a performance target for their campaigns and allow Amazon DSP to automatically optimize their bids in real-time. That will help optimize distribution at their performance target. 

Focusing on advertising goals is an intuitive process and this update makes it possible to maximize delivery at a performance threshold that you’re able to easily define. 

For example, this update allows you to maximize your campaign goal, such as conversions, while at the same time adhering closely to a specified target cost per action (or CPA).

How Canopy Management Can Help

Selling on Amazon can be pretty straightforward. 

The problem, as always, will come down to two things; bandwidth and ability. Maybe you have the ability, or lack the time. Maybe it’s the other way around. If either case is true, Canopy Management is here to help. 

Canopy’s Amazon Advertising team has a long, successful history of helping some of the biggest brands on Amazon get noticed on the increasingly crowded marketplace. In 2023, Amazon Advertising has become the big leagues, and requires professional level expertise to not just survive, but thrive. 

Want to know how to level up your own brand’s Amazon advertising, just ask!