Trend, Tradeshow Recaps, Industry Insights and more!
To anyone deeply involved in digital advertising and retail media, Amazon unBoxed is on par with the NBA Finals. This annual event, hosted by Amazon Ads, is the opportunity for industry insiders to discuss evolving best practices as well as learn about new product announcements, features and insights.
This year, there were a number of exciting announcements. In my opinion, the most Impactful was the introduction of multi-touch attribution.
Advertisers in the United States will be able to access multi-touch attribution metrics in their sponsored ads and Amazon DSP reporting which can lead to more informed decisions about ad strategies. Credits for Amazon purchase conversions will be divided across Amazon Ads touchpoints “in proportion to their value” (how likely they are to contribute to shopping decisions).
This will increase the value of upper-funnel tactics. For the first time, we’ll actually be able to measure the value of running tactics like DSP and STV. This will allow us to draw a through-line between upper-funnel tactics and last-click attribution to determine what the actual value is, materially, of a full-funnel strategy.
Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) is getting a vast upgrade with a new Solutions dashboard. Users can finally analyze their advertising tactics without needing knowledge of SQL. Previously, the only way to engage with AMC was with SQL – Structured Query Language, which is unfamiliar to many users.
AMC users will now be able to determine relative weighted campaign attribution, path to conversion and long-term sales. An example of this is to weight campaigns very early in the funnel for high ASP items with a long consideration cycle.
While last year’s unBoxed event touched on Amazon TV and Amazon Prime Video, this year those categories were the main focus. Amazon’s expansions into exclusive deals with NASCAR and the NBA were, rightfully, celebrated.
But this year, the major upgrade is the possibility of measuring between multi-touch attribution reports and a much friendlier AMC dashboard that allows anyone to measure effectiveness across multiple strategies and customer touchpoints.
This makes Amazon Prime Video a much more appealing option for brands, who can now define the value of those tactics.
Amazon has been striving for years to get brands to see Amazon Advertising as a platform for brand building. There has often been an equal desire on the part of companies to use Amazon for branding, but the challenge has always been how to measure their efforts. As a result, many brands focus on lower-funnel, conversion-based tactics because they are the easiest way to prove that marketing dollars are working.
However, now brands can invest in tactics across the customer shopping funnel and have a better understanding of their true ROI. This makes spending marketing dollars on STV, DSP, etc., a more viable tactic. With new measurement tools, no one needs to reply solely on last-click attribution to know if their advertising investment works. We can draw a common theme through the entire customer journey and truly measure various tactics against KPIs like New-to-Brand, Cost per Acquisition, Loyalty and more.
While there were many other announcements at unBoxed, including the introduction of an AI creative studio and new product campaigns, I consider the measurement pieces most vital.
If your brand is selling on Amazon and you need to take it to the next level, The Barcode Group leans on our decades of deep Amazon experience to build and maintain successful relationships with the world’s largest online retailer. Discover what we can do for you by contacting us today at info@thebarcodegroup.com.
We’re constantly gaining industry knowledge: from tips and tricks to back end data, we got crazy amounts of knowledge ready to share with you.
Get access
