Go Big or Go Home: Advertising on Amazon
They didn’t name it Amazon for nothing.
As if the king of all internet retailers hasn’t dominated enough sectors, it’s now among the top platforms for advertising. There are good reasons for that, and none of them should be a surprise.
Just as Facebook took the social media world by storm, effectively lining out competitors, Amazon is well on its way to becoming the premier commerce player of all time. Aside from negative press surrounding unfortunate stories of porch package thefts, their rep is quite stellar, even as they creep toward a quasi-monopoly territory that has retailers concerned.
And why not? Eclipsing the 600 million product mark in 2018, it seems there isn’t much you can’t find on the popular site. Add to that two-day delivery with its Prime feature, and you have a massive cabal of captive targets. More than 300 million of them, to be exact.
This is where you come in. Whether or not you use Amazon as a sales platform, you should be giving serious consideration to its advertising feature. Not too much of a departure from Google Ads, Amazon creates a seamless search function for site users to locate a product. Sponsored posts appear at the top, designated as such in a subtle way. That puts your offering front and center to a consumer directly searching for it on a favorite portal.
So successful is the Amazon ad platform that brands are beginning to move ad budgets from Google and Facebook to the Seattle-based Superstar.
In 2017 Amazon created 2,000 new jobs in New York City, and many of those were directly connected to advertising. Amazon execs saw a fruitful prospect and seized on it. In the two years since, it has beefed up functions and features to attract more advertisers. In fact, it’s developed a novel self-service training console for advertisers.
The Amazon Ads turning point
What’s behind the seismic shift? For starters, Amazon is backing off its penchant to be stingy with shopper data. It understands that to cap out on the potential for being known as a go-to ad platform, it will need to make keyword volume, impression share, and ad placement information available to users and prospective users.
With more access to the numbers, advertisers feel more confident to put their eggs in the Amazon ad basket. A recent study of big-time retail marketers revealed a growing enthusiasm for Amazon ads, attributed largely to accessing the company’s expansive, affluent, and high-volume shopper base. Numbers don’t lie, and it’s hard to float ideological justifications for avoiding the kingpin when your audience is huge and available.
But size isn’t everything, and marketers are also keen on Amazon’s power to drive net new business. Amazon has become a brand in itself to many of its loyal base. With more and more going straight to the Amazon site for product searches, why wouldn’t you want to be part of that? Following a sale, you can build on that customer relationship and gently form an interactive loyalty of your own.
See what the buzz is about by perusing this primer, and start shifting your ad focus to a mega online retailer.