The future of addressability and advertising technology

The next generation of AdTech will be powered by advanced AI and machine learning models that don’t require third-party cookies or ad identifiers. It will come with simplified technology, the control and transparency advertisers expect, and closer relationships between brands, publishers, and third-party services.

Cookies are being phased out and the industry can no longer rely on a single piece of information to connect advertisers, customers, and advertising services for delivering relevant ads. This lack of visibility into key attributes like shopping and ad interaction signals across multiple properties makes it challenging for traditional digital advertising services to understand what creates meaningful experiences, what content drives conversions with relevant audiences, and how to optimize advertising throughout the customer journey for maximum engagement and sales. However, Amazon Ads has invested years into developing a new generation of AdTech that doesn't need third-party cookies, and we're already helping advertisers navigate this transition.

Amazon Ads new Ad Relevance is our innovative approach to determine relevant ad opportunities everywhere we serve ads. Ad Relevance is built on Amazon Ads’ extensive understanding of what creates great shopping experiences, and the connection those shopping experiences have with ad interactions, product and category interests, and cadence of actions along the path-to-conversion It uses the latest in AI technology to analyze billions of browsing, buying, and streaming signals in conjunction with real-time information about the content being viewed to understand where customers are in their shopping journeys and serve them relevant ads across devices, channels, and content types without needing third-party cookies. This technology already powers many of Amazon Ads offerings, including Amazon Audiences, Contextual Targeting, and Performance+. It is delivering meaningful impact for brands, including extend addressability on up to 65% of previously anonymous impressions lowering CPMs by up to 34%, and improving CPCs by 8.8% — all with 100% budget delivery.

Simplification of programmatic media buying is necessary with the increasingly fragmented range of media and technology services, but it doesn’t have to come at the cost of control and transparency. Advertisers are tasked with building and protecting their brand and knowing the value of their investments. This requires the ability to control when and where ads are served and maintaining a deep understanding of how their campaigns perform. We aim to solve this by simplifying fundamental marketing tasks like planning, activation, and measurement, while providing advertisers with the controls and transparency they expect.

We built Performance+ to make it easy for advertisers to unlock Ad Relevance's power in programmatic media buying. Advertisers only need to connect their advertising insights and set the KPI they want to achieve, and our advanced AI and machine learning models achieve their desired outcomes. Performance+ simplifies programmatic buying with transparent reporting on effective creatives, placements, audiences reached, and controls to ensure ads reach the audience they want to reach. Advertisers upload business signals through Amazon Ads ad tag and conversion API, then Performance+’s advanced AI and machine learning models use this information to automatically optimize campaigns. A great example of this is Cox, a telecommunications company, which used Performance+ to drive more website visitors based on their online/call center engagement signals, leading to a 40% CPA improvement.

Amazon Marketing Cloud is another example of how we give advertisers control and improve transparency to help them unlock insights that drive broader business value. Amazon Marketing Cloud is a clean room service that makes it possible for brands to securely join first- and third-party signals to understand customer journeys, build and discover audiences, and seamlessly activate those audiences across channels. Telecommunications company Cox also brought their offline conversion records to Amazon Marketing Cloud and performed a custom multi-touch attribution analysis. They learned that customers who converted after seeing Amazon Ads advertisements have, on average, a 9% higher lifetime value score among all of their new customers.

Closer relationships between advertisers, publishers, and third-party services to optimize ad experiences.

With the fragmentation of advertising channels and range of service providers, advertisers need help simplifying access and management of these relationships, and we continue to explore technology to help advertisers and publishers do this.

We created Amazon Publisher Cloud to bring advertisers and publishers closer together. Amazon Publisher Cloud is the only clean room service that enables publishers to analyze their signals with advertisers’ and Amazon Ads signals to create custom deals in Amazon DSP that deliver more relevant advertising and reach at scale. For example, a publisher can understand how its contextual signals index against Amazon Ads audiences that are looking for products such as pet food or cookware, and create a deal for a brand that wants reach those in-market customers. These deals are then easily accessible for advertisers in the Amazon DSP Inventory Hub. Dotdash Meredith, FOX and Tubi via AdRise, Hearst Magazines, NBCUniversal, Newsweek, Warner Bros. Discovery, The Washington Post, and more are already using Amazon Publisher Cloud and we continue to extend the service to more publishers.

Through the Amazon Publisher Services Connections Marketplace, we're also enabling publishers to easily connect with third-party advertising services like ad identity providers, offering advertisers more optionality to engage their desired audiences. With the recent Signal IQ beta launch – a new measurement solution to help publishers quantify the performance of their supply-side signals, starting with third-party ad identifiers. Publishers can use Signal IQ to measure, benchmark, and optimize their signal investments to refine strategies and better align with advertiser needs