Amazon’s DSP redesign and AI audio ads—what advertisers need to know from unBoxed

Amazon revealed a “complete overhaul” of its demand-side platform after giving the ad tech platform what it hopes is a better user interface. At the same time, Amazon released new generative AI tools to create ads, including audio ads for the first time. On Tuesday, Amazon took the wraps off its updated DSP as part of unBoxed, its yearly ad tech event. “It’s going to be a complete overhaul in terms of the user experience,” said Kelly MacLean, VP of Amazon DSP, ahead of unBoxed. MacLean was referring to the demand-side platform, which will unveil a series of changes over the coming months to make the ad tech easier to use and more efficient. For advertisers inside the DSP, which is where they manage and launch internet ads that reach Amazon properties and third-party websites, there will be an easier way to create campaigns and the user interface will have a better design for reporting on campaign performance, MacLean said. Amazon developed what it called “insight cards,” which display key, real-time campaign information, and introduced new frequency cap tools to control how often the same consumer sees the same ad. The DSP also has more seamless integrations with other products, including Amazon Marketing Cloud and a new ads data manager, which is a platform for brands to upload their first-party data to apply it to ad campaigns. “[We’re] sitting with [advertising] traders every single week to really figure out how we can improve, close some gaps, that we have historically had,” MacLean said, referring to the feedback the company receives from the market about the DSP and how it can evolve. Check out the latest Ad Age events and award programs Designing a new DSP Amazon has been a rising power in digital advertising for years, and its DSP has become one of the core products it invested in to compete on the buy-side of advertising. Amazon is up against The Trade Desk, which is a DSP, and Google’s DSP Display and Video 360. Ad tech experts and marketers in the programmatic trenches have often noted that Amazon’s DSP had not yet matched rivals’ technology. The latest updates, however, may help shift perceptions. “Over the last couple of years, we’ve completely re-architected the entire backend of Amazon DSP,” MacLean said, “ensuring that we’re able to leverage all of the trillions of signals that we have to drive the best performance. And we’ve been obsessed with performance, and we’ve heard the feedback that advertisers want a more full-featured, yet simple and easy-to-use, media buying tool … we wanted to figure out how we can design a new DSP experience with this input in mind.” In the first half of the year, Amazon’s ad business generated $24.6 billion, up 22% compared to the first six months of 2023. At the start of this year, Amazon officially launched ads on Prime Video, an increasingly important source of new, premium ad inventory for the company. Also, Amazon is developing ad tech that serves publishers so ads can run on connected TV apps and websites outside of Amazon-owned properties. Prime Video is a prestigious ad offering, but the nuts and bolts of Amazon’s ad products are within its e-commerce engine, where brands use search, display, audio and other ad formats to reach consumers. Amazon’s shopper data is the fuel that powers the targeting and measurement. At unBoxed, Amazon announced it would expand Prime Video ads to more markets, including Brazil, India, Japan, the Netherlands and New Zealand. Amazon said it would keep the ad loads “limited” in those regions, and positioned it as a way to help fund local content. More: Prime’s ‘Thursday Night Football’ adds advertisers AI and measurement On Tuesday, Amazon also announced new generative AI tools to build the ads. Last year, Amazon announced AI image-generating tools that spruced up product images in ads, but the AI is getting more sophisticated. Amazon’s AI now ads some animation to images, like steam rising off a cup of coffee, in what Amazon calls “live” AI images. AI also can produce up to 10 seconds of video for ads that can run online and on connected TV. On Tuesday, Amazon launched a generative AI product that will produce audio ads. “So, just like with images and videos, advertisers can create audio ads that can be heard all across Alexa-enabled devices,” said Jay Richman, VP of creative experiences for Amazon Ads. More AI ad news: Adobe launches AI video tool Amazon also launched an AI creative studio app for marketers that will incorporate all of its generative AI tools into one platform. AI is helping smaller brands stand up ad campaigns with fewer resources and helps brands meet the increased demand for content online, Richman said. “That’s why we launched, a year ago, image generator,” Richman said, adding that it’s “a super simple but powerful tool that turns product shots into display ads, and we did that in order to make display advertising way more accessible.” NextGen Marketing Summit Join us for a crash course on Gen Z, DTC marketing and the creator economy Register today Amazon has joined Meta, TikTok, Google, Microsoft and others in the pursuit of building generative AI for creativity. The rise of AI has made it easier for brands and agencies to create multiple variants of ads in multiple formats. There also are machine learning tools that handle more of the campaign management, such as coming up with the best audiences to target and deciding which ads are performing the best. Recent news: 5 AI takeaways from Advertising Week 2024 Amazon has a recent ad product called Performance+, which is like Google’s Performance Max, Meta’s Advantage+ and TikTok Smart+. These are campaigns that handle the targeting, bidding and other functions. MacLean said that Amazon has sought to address some of the downsides of AI, at least according to advertisers, including questions about transparency. Advertisers have expressed concerns about how AI makes the decisions, and the advertisers want some control. “On the control front, it’s [about] ensuring that there’s more control over the inputs that are going into the campaign,” MacLean said. “And then on the control and the transparency front, we want to make sure that we’re providing reports that give more visibility into where the ads are delivered and run.” At unBoxed, Amazon also released measurement and optimization updates inside the DSP, Amazon Marketing Cloud, and Amazon Ads self-serve platform. The new measurement tools are making it so brands can use their first-party data to analyze campaigns, conversions and sales, and then target higher-value consumers in follow-up ad campaigns. For instance, Amazon shared an example of a brand, Bedsure, which targeted ads to a segment of consumers that accounted for its top 30% of spenders. There also is a new multitouch attribution mechanism inside Amazon Ads’ self-serve platform, a complex measurement process that tracks the effects of ad placements across digital channels. “By removing the barriers to rich media advertising with our many [AI] generators and then blurring the boundaries between traditional display, video and audio production with AI creative studio, the DSP is working on helping activate that creative [work] seamlessly and simply,” Richman said. “And then measurement is focused on helping connect the dots so advertisers can see how all of their investment ladders up into outcomes.”

Amazon’s DSP redesign and AI audio ads—what advertisers need to know from unBoxed

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