Branding with Amazon DSP: An interview with Ed Dinichert

8 JANUARY 2020

Vanessa Courtright
Product Marketing Manager

Ed Dinichert is the director of global programmatic advertising sales at Amazon Ads, where he focuses on helping agencies and advertisers successfully use Amazon DSP to achieve their programmatic campaign goals. Previously, Ed was the head of Amazon Ads France, and has been in the media industry for 15 years. We caught up with Ed on the importance of programmatic advertising for branding efforts.

Amazon DSP is young in the grand scheme of programmatic advertising. What has adoption looked like for advertisers and agencies?

Adoption has been quite positive. Advertisers who sell products on Amazon have started using the Amazon DSP to grow beyond sponsored ads and into display and video. Being able to leverage Amazon's audiences and our unique supply, such as placements across Amazon.com and IMDb TV, is also a draw for advertisers who don't sell products in Amazon’s retail store. At first, advertisers looked to us to execute direct-response campaigns, but have recently been leaning more heavily into branding initiatives.

Why is programmatic advertising suited for branding goals?

Not long ago, linear television was the best access point for viewing premium content. Today, people consume content on multiple screens. Their priority is accessing stories when they want them, not where or how. This is why branding and awareness goals have moved beyond traditional media such as television. Programmatic is a great solution for executing branding initiatives because it gives advertisers more efficiency and less waste, using frequency management and a better understanding of their audience. Through programmatic, advertisers have access to more high-quality supply and formats like video (on connected TV as well as in-stream and out-stream online video across desktop and mobile), digital out-of-home, audio and high-impact display. Advertisers can also look beyond legacy tools for better awareness indicators such as unique reach, impressions served and view-through rate.

What is a common question that you hear from advertisers?

We're often asked about the benefits of using Amazon DSP for brands that don’t sell on Amazon. Advertisers who don’t sell on Amazon, from financial services to telecom, see positive results with Amazon Ads, and a key to their success is the ability to use Amazon audiences to reach new customers. For example, an automotive company experienced a five times more efficient cost per acquisition using Amazon audiences through Amazon DSP compared to third-party audiences. Additionally, the Amazon DSP provides access to our owned-and-operated supply, like video on connected TVs, as well as a view of audiences across devices, which allows advertisers to control ad frequency, be more efficient with spend and improve customers’ ad experience.

Should advertisers focus primarily on connecting the dots between branding and sales?

In short the answer is no, and not just across Amazon Ads, but for any campaign across any technology. Today, most CMOs still focus on awareness as a KPI, but brand equity generated through high-funnel tactics takes time to build, requires a long-term view and is complex to measure. Meanwhile, CEOs expect CMOs to prove their value through return on investment or sales. Because of granular insights from digital, marketers sometimes think that they can piece together results from multiple tools to paint a full picture, but branding and conversion are two separate goals with different KPIs.

How should advertisers work with Amazon Ads to achieve their programmatic objectives?

Whether you sell products on Amazon or not, it's most effective to have a dual approach to campaigns across Amazon DSP. We recommend that advertisers have two separate teams or work streams – one that focuses on top of the funnel, and a separate one that deals with bottom of the funnel. Making a brand known and considered is difficult work; it's another challenge to drive purchase and recommendation. Each team collaborates with and challenges the other, but maintains their goals and metrics aligned to their individual objective along the path to purchase to avoid unnecessary friction. In this model, advertisers continue to nurture and reach customers, ultimately driving sales and conversions. Both teams understand that there is no immediate measurement that gauges direct correlation between the two objectives.

What are you hearing advertisers value most about Amazon DSP?

In combination with an advertiser’s own audiences, Amazon’s insights enrich a marketer's understanding of how to most effectively engage their audience. With Amazon DSP, advertisers can better manage frequency, achieve cross-device addressability and extend businesses’ audiences for net new reach.

Second, Amazon Ads has a vast selection of ad formats like OTT/streaming TV, online video, and high-impact display that are key for awareness goals. Businesses that sell on Amazon can also create video ads at no cost, even without video assets, using our new video creative builder open beta. This tool provides advertisers with a library of video assets and templates to create multiple video ads from one single video asset, and experiment with different overlays, products, images and calls to action without spending extra time or resources on custom video production.

Lastly, we have measurement solutions that broaden the understanding of campaign impact and enhance advertisers’ media planning. Amazon offers several in-house solutions for all advertisers, such as an audience planning tool and audience overlap reports, as well as third-party measurement solutions to gauge brand lift, brand reach and more.

If you are interested in learning more about how you can achieve branding and awareness goals using Amazon DSP, reach out to your Amazon representative.