unBoxed 2022: Amazon Ads showcases new products to help brands engage and delight customers through video and streaming ads
October 26, 2022
Today, at its unBoxed 2022 conference, Amazon Ads highlighted new solutions to help advertisers of all sizes use the power of video and streaming media to more effectively share their brand and product stories with customers.
According to third-party research from Wyzowl, 73% of consumers say they prefer video ads to learn about products and services, and 88% say video ads have convinced them to buy.1 The US is home to more than 225 million streaming TV viewers,2 and while spending on digital video advertising is expected to reach $76 billion in 2022,3 advertisers face a fragmented and confusing landscape of channels, providers, and tools.
Amazon Ads simplifies the experience for advertisers with a comprehensive set of solutions.
“Our video ad solutions work together and make it simpler for brands to reach relevant audiences at scale, so they can deliver their creative work alongside popular content, engage viewers with delightful experiences, and measure and optimize their impact,” said Tanner Elton, vice president of US sales for Amazon Ads. “We want to bring the power of video advertising to more brands, no matter their size or level of resources.”
Empowering brands of all sizes
At unBoxed 2022, Amazon Ads announced it is bringing video to its self-service Sponsored Display solution. The new Sponsored Display video creative, generally available worldwide now, empowers advertisers of all sizes, particularly small and emerging brands, to easily create video campaigns to showcase their products and stories to millions of customers on Amazon and elsewhere online. Brands can deliver immersive video ads, such as tutorials, demos, unboxing, and testimonials, and measure campaign performance with standard Sponsored Display metrics.
Amazon Ads also announced an expanded public beta program for Video Builder, which makes it easy for brands to create videos for their Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display campaigns through ready-to-use customizable templates. Using available product and lifestyle images to create more engaging ad content, advertisers can easily build video creatives in less than 10 minutes at no additional cost. They can also expand their use of video campaigns and quickly experiment with creative variations to maximize engagement.
“We needed a quick and straightforward solution that would help promote our window air conditioners this summer,” said Phil Lepper, vice president and general manager of hOmeLabs, a subsidiary of Aterian Inc. “With Video Builder, we had creative done within seven minutes and launched three new campaigns in 30 minutes that allowed us to adjust messaging for the variations in product size. The campaigns resulted in a click-through rate of 4.49%, with a 15% advertising cost of sales, which was more than a 100% improvement over similar campaigns without videos.”
Amazon creative services, which is now available in eight countries, is a new offering that helps advertisers discover, compare, and directly book with trusted service providers for the creation of impactful Sponsored Brands, Streaming TV, and Sponsored Display videos, as well as other creative assets. Brands can search and filter services based on their requirements, browse reviews and samples, and directly connect with providers for end-to-end creative delivery, all within the Amazon ads console. Creative services simplify the production process for advertisers, and enable more multichannel or upper-funnel marketing. The service is free to use, and there are no minimum commitments required to book. All services provide a “moderation guarantee,” which ensures compliance with Amazon Ads policy.
Measuring the incremental reach of Streaming TV ads
At unBoxed, Amazon Ads also introduced Amazon Streaming TV incremental household reach, a new enhancement to its Streaming TV ads solution. Amazon Streaming TV reaches an unduplicated potential monthly US audience of more than 135 million, including Twitch.4 Streaming TV incremental household reach is a post-campaign reporting solution that helps brands measure the unique, incremental audience reached through Amazon Streaming TV Ads campaigns, above and beyond their linear TV campaigns. The solution ensures accurate, aggregated results by combining first-party and third-party signals, augmented by machine leaning-based-projections. With in-flight reporting, brands can stay informed and make optimizations during campaigns.
Innovating for customer success
Amazon Ads also demonstrated a range of other innovations at unBoxed 2022 that are focused on providing brands with simple but powerful ways to engage the right audience with compelling video advertising. For example:
Thursday Night Football, streaming exclusively on Prime Video and Twitch, delivers exciting new experiences to a younger adult and more engaged audience, and Amazon first-party insights provide advertisers with new opportunities to reengage fans across Amazon properties after the last whistle.
The IMDb What to Watch app offers Fire TV customers in the US a series of fun, interactive mini-games and quizzes to help fans decide what to stream. And with in-app sponsorships such as Quick Draw game sponsorship (beta), brands can be front and center as viewers discover great content.
The new customer experience for interactive video ads features multiple customer call-to-action (CTA) options, including single actions like “Add to cart” and “Add to list,” multi-action experiences such as “Buy this” and “Shop now,” and for brands not selling on Amazon, “Send me more” information via email or through a QR code.
The Freevee Welcome Screen (beta) provides advertisers with a unique opportunity to showcase their brands in a full-screen, seven-second experience as customers launch the Freevee app on Fire TV.
1 Wyzowl, The State of Video Marketing, US, 2022
2 eMarketer, US. February 2022
3 IAB, US, May 2022
4Amazon, July 2022