Q&A with Zach Johnson, Director of International Advertising Sales

Overall, my experience has been that advertising in the EU does not differ that much from that in the US. All our advertisers, regardless of location, want to find, attract and engage with customers. Like us, our advertisers are committed to their customers, and that means providing impactful advertising and business solutions that are relevant at every stage of the decision journey.

However, what was perhaps not so apparent to me before my move here was just how different the process around planning was within each country. There is no “one size fits all” for pan-European campaigns. Every detail is translated and adapted to the individual needs of the brand and culture from which the solutions is activated. This is particularly true when it comes to building brands and driving awareness. These campaigns are about engaging with audiences and sharing messages that will resonate and help form a connection. We work very closely with our advertisers and their agencies to ensure that campaigns have the right tone, context and timbre needed for each country.

One of the main priorities for my team is ensuring that advertisers are fully aware of all our capabilities. It is widely known that Amazon Ads can and does deliver on performance advertising. But we offer so much more. We are working hard to help all of our advertisers understand our full-funnel solutions that can support brand building and drive connections with customers. This means that we need to double down on educating advertisers and the many functions within their organization, plus agencies, on the full suite of our products and services.

We want to help CMOs and VPs understand that Amazon Ads can help them deliver successful campaigns with a proven return on investment (measuring sales lift across all channels). We have to show planners and brands that we understand the shopping journey through our audience solutions. We want to demonstrate to the insights and research teams that our measurement and attribution tools can help them better understand the performance of their full digital media portfolio. And last, but by no means least, we want to demonstrate to creatives that our team of storytellers, design technologists and engineers can develop flagship customer experiences that capture customers’ attention. Amazon is known for delivering a great customer experience, and we take this to heart when building our business with each of our advertising customers.